This much I know: Mark Gatiss, 58

Photography by Bertie Watson

My earliest memory is traumatic. It was a boiling hot day, I was aged two or three, and Mum wheeled my pushchair to the postbox. She broke off a branch of a nearby lilac bush and put it in my lap. I was amazed by the colour, then earwigs flooded into my lap.

Dad was a collier engineer, and also worked in a psychiatric hospital across the road from us. I was a gardener there as a summer job. Some older patients had been put there in the 1930s for having children outside of marriage. It gave me a healthy attitude towards mental health.

I’m never sure what to do with artificial anniversaries. For instance, it’s the 15th anniversary of Sherlock, apparently, but you can’t mark everything, as you’d spend your entire life memorialising. It’s also 15 minutes since I walked through that door.

When you lose both your parents, something else goes with it. It seems mad to say you’re an orphan – you sound like a Victorian child. But that’s what I am.

I hadn’t had many successful relationships before I met Ian. I asked him to marry me on our second date. I was half joking, but it’s worked out. He’s everything to me.

The beginning of The League of Gentlemen was almost accidental. I was studying Theatre Arts where I met Steve [Pemberton], Reese [Shearsmith] and Jeremy [Dyson], and we were asked to get together for a fringe festival to fill in for something else at the last minute. After doing five nights we thought, “We should do something with this.”

Best on-screen kiss? Ben Whishaw.

I’m not a thrill seeker. I don’t like rollercoasters. I’ve been on the Big One in Blackpool three times. But it’s like being executed. There’s a moment when it goes almost vertical and all you think is, “Why am I doing this to myself?”

I can’t drive. I’m afraid of the responsibility. I can’t conceive of being in charge of that great big piece of machinery without killing someone, including myself. So I’ve never tried.

Never trust anyone who puts the milk in second. Put the milk in before the tea. I’m from the north. It’s what we do. And it’s jam before cream, but after butter when it comes to scones.

You don’t notice your own incremental signs of ageing. I went to a friend’s 60th birthday recently, and saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen for years. It was like everyone was wearing not-very-good prosthetics. I thought, “I must look like that too.”

Getting old is a privilege which I never moan about. My sister died at 51. I remember the anniversary of my mother’s death – my sister and I had just been to the crematorium. Driving back, my cousin said, “Who wants to get old, eh?” My sister put a hand up and said, “Me!” Life becomes increasingly difficult, but as long as you’re surviving, that’s a victory.

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