Nick Frost: "Peter Capaldi showed me around the Tardis and it was amazing"

It was an exciting gig for the long-time sci-fi fan, especially when he got a tour of the Tardis from the Doctor himself. "It was amazing," he told an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. "My last scenes were in the Tardis and I'd put off going in [there], even though it was just on another stage, through the whole two weeks I was there.

"Then Peter Capaldi went, just me and him, and he just showed me around the Tardis and it was amazing. He showed me what all these buttons did."

The actor and comedian explained, "There are a few times in your career when you think, 'oh, what's happening here?'"

Frost – who first made his name in TV comedy Spaced – was in town to promote his new memoir, Truths, Half Truths & Little White Lies, which was published yesterday. In it he recounts his childhood, the tragedies that hit his family and the founding of his fruitful double act with Simon Pegg whom he starred with in Spaced before the pair co-wrote the Cornetto trilogy, directed by Edgar Wright.

Frost revealed that the trio have "another thing" in the works but it's currently "in planning and secret mode". In the meantime, his own book could be used as material for the silver screen: "I think there's a film in there maybe about a fictitious oik who came good in the end," he said, but only "if I could write the screenplay."

The actor also admitted he's "quite critical of TV comedy so I tend to not watch it because anyone watching it with me gets really upset."

He explained, "I’m quite critical of the construction of it. I love watching old comedy – I watch Larry Sanders a lot still and I watch Dad’s Army. My four-year-old watches Dad’s Army now. He sits there and watches it and I sit there watching him watch it and I think any minute he’s going to want to turn it off but he doesn’t, he watches the whole thing."