When Johnny Vegas was paralysed by fear | Comic's terror in a hot-air balloon

When Johnny Vegas was paralysed by fear

Comic's terror in a hot-air balloon

comedyJohnny Vegas has revealed he was so terrified filming in a hot air balloon that he was unable to speak.

The comic filmed a scene of his BBC One comedy Home From Home in a balloon with Emilia Fox.

But he confesses on tonight’s Graham Norton show: ’As we went up I got lower and lower into the corner of the basket.  

‘I couldn’t speak and started making terrible grunting noises. Then I became terrified that Emilia was going to fall over the side.  It was terrifying.’

It’s not the only terrible professional experience Vegas recounts on the talk show – revealing that his famous 2011 photoshoot when he posed naked to mimic Demi Moore’s Vanity Fair cover was ‘terrible’.

‘I was close to tears because I am actually very shy,’ he said. ‘Nobody told me I would be naked.  As I was putting my trousers back on I looked up and there was a woman in the office opposite typing and just staring at me. I just mouthed "Sorry" at her.  

‘That was the first picture my mother-in-law ever saw of me!’

Also on the show, Episodes star Stephen Mangan jokes that he is a lazy parent, using audio books that he had narrated to get his children to sleep.

‘I’ve recorded a lot of audio books, he confessed, ‘so we had a lot of fairy tales on CD and I am ashamed to say that with our first child, I would press "play" and back out of the room. 

‘I wonder if he thought it odd that every story started with, "Read by Stephen Mangan."’

The Graham Norton Show is BBC One at 10.35pm tonight.

Published: 4 May 2018

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