Mangan: I've obviously got a face for comedy

Stephen Mangan, better known to Green Wing fans as half-Swiss anaesthetist Guy Secretan, has recently been interviewed by The Guardian, where he has talked about his career in comedy, and his general roles as egotists, insensitive people, and the arrogant.

Other than Guy, other similar parts he has played have included a stand-up comedian who fails to see that everyone around thinks he is an idiot in the 2005 film Festival, an obnoxious tennis enthusiast in Confetti, and is playing a self-obsessed man who dumps his girlfriend to find someone better in the forthcoming film Someone Else, released this Friday.

To quote the interview, Mangan said: "I can't sit here and deny that there isn't a bit of that in me. But it's the joy of being an actor, you can take those little private things in you and blow them up for comic effect." And, since Secretan, 'self-loving peacocks' are what he gets offered. "The business kind of chooses the career for you, I've obviously got a face for comedy."

Mangan also comments of the impact of his most famous character. The interview reads:

'A couple of years ago, Stephen Mangan was in hospital with his father, who needed an operation for a brain tumour. At the time, Mangan was filming the second series of Green Wing, the surreal Channel 4 comedy in which he played the breathtakingly insensitive and arrogant anaesthetist Guy Secretan. "One anaesthetist came into the room," he recalls, "and we had this very heavy and emotional chat about the operation my dad was going to have. And as he got up to leave, he looked at me, grinned, and gave me a wink, as if to say, 'I know who you are and we're brothers.' And I thought, just shove off! Have a sense of time and place."'

The full interview can be read on Guardian Unlimited.

Stephen Mangan will be appearing with Jessica Hynes (formally Stevenson) on tonight's edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? UPDATE: Steve and Jessica won £50,000 for their charities.