Quarantine Quiz – The Goes Wrong Show's Dave Hearn and Charlie Russell

It's a rubbish time for those locked down and theatres shut. But we wanted to find out what stars, producers and creatives are getting up to while cooped up in their own homes!

Our next interviewees are Dave Hearn and Charlie Russell, stars of The Play That Goes Wrong and The Goes Wrong Show (which you can watch right now on BBC iPlayer). In a special twist on the usual format, the pair are locked down together – and now we get to hear about the experience from both sides.

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1) Who are you locked down with?

CR: Dave Hearn. The idiot.

DH: Charlie Russell aka the Super idiot (you can look that up!)

2) What are you missing most during lockdown?

CR: The lockdown has meant I can't visit my family. We Zoom a lot, which is great, but I really want to give my niece and nephew a squeeze that they will almost certainly wriggle out of and proceed to call me a poo poo head before running away. I miss that.

DH: Of course my family, my mum is nurse, she's on the front line, so I worry about her. My dad works in the labs testing everyone's blood, but he's a smart guy he'll be fine and my sister is…well I never really know, but she's got a PhD in biochemistry so she'll probably find a cure from her laptop at home.

3) What's your default Pick-Me-Up show tune?

CR: "I have confidence!" from Sound of Music, "The Schuyler Sisters/Wait For It" from Hamilton, or "No Way" from Six.

…I don't normally consider myself as a massive MT fan, but maybe I need to rethink my status on this…

DH: Probably anything on the Six album to be fair, great workout music.

4) Favourite box-set binge?

CR: Currently in the process of introducing The West Wing to Dave and it's making me very happy to watch again. But if I could only watch one box set again, for the rest of time, I think it might have to be the US Office.

DH: Just smashed through nine seasons of the US Office and I really liked it, I thought it would never be as good as the UK one but I highly recommend it.

5) What's the When-I-Get-Some-Time project that you are hoping to tackle during lockdown?

CR: Oh you know, doing my taxes, oiling the wooden kitchen surface, learning piano, writing a masterpiece sitcom…the usual.

DH: Doing a lot of writing at the moment. Writing a TV show with Charlie, but she keeps trying to make it about being an Idiot and I'm finding that quite hard to work with.

6) What are you currently reading?

CR: The Book Of Dust, The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman (book two in this trilogy). His books are my desert island books.

DH: The Secret Barrister, it's a very good insight into our legal system from an anonymous currently practicing barrister. Some of it truly eye opening and terrifying.

7) Have you cleaned out your kitchen cupboards and if so, what's the oldest thing you found?

CR: Questionable kidney beans from 2016.

DH: Oh yes! I found an old tea strainer….thing…it was…I dunno….old….

8) If you could take a virtual tour of any building in the world which one would it be?

CR: I've spent a lot of time in it, so to go touring around the New York Public Library would bring back happy memories.

DH: I was meant to go to Italy just before the lockdown, so the Colosseum would be cool.

9) How many loo rolls do you really have in your house?

CR: Ok! Right. We actually buy them in bulk anyway from Who Gives a Cr*p! Because I permanently have the fear of running out, lockdown or no lockdown. So we have a lot…but we did go round to our neighbours and drop off emergency loo roll parcels!

DH: Many, in our defence we always have many. Charlie is weirdly in charge of that so exactly how many? She'd need to check her flow charts.

10) If you decided to learn a new language during lockdown, which one would it be and why?

CR: Well, I know very very basic, can-go-on-holiday-and-not-be-totally-lost Spanish, so probably I'd work on that. But I think Arabic would be the (impossible) dream.

DH: Italian I think. I know a few people that speak it and I worked with a lot of Italians who tried to teach me.. That or Scottish.

11) Which board game would you choose to while away an evening?

CR: Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly Deal. Big in the Russell household.

DH: I reckon Monopoly Deal. Or classic Monopoly, we got time now right?

12) What time is Wine-O'Clock in your house?

CR: I don't drink a lot, and thought I might use this time to cut down even more…but my non-alcoholic beer time would be 8pm with a quiz or board game!

DH: Basically whenever we do a Mischief Zoom quiz, by the end I'm shouting and guessing.