Multi-talented Sandi Toksvig tells Roz Laws about rude people, war and her hatred of sport.

SANDI Toksvig is on a roll, lamenting the parlous state of modern manners.

We are just too rude to each other, she believes.

She is so keen on the subject that she has just finished a book – her 23rd or 24th, she’s lost count – to be published in the autumn. It’s a modern guide to manners and why we need them.

And she needs little prompting to launch into a tirade against rudeness.

“Part of the problem now is social media,” says the 55-year-old comedian, author, actor and broadcaster.

“There aren’t many manners on Twitter, which is full of trolls posting very horrible things and hiding behind anonymity. It’s horrific and it’s why I’m not on Twitter.

“The same thing happens to a certain extent with driving. People think they are anonymous behind the wheel, that they’re not going to be called to account, and that it’s fine not to indicate where they are going. Do they think signalling is just an optional extra? That really annoys me.

“I find it breathtaking how rude drivers can be, like the men that flick two fingers at you for some perceived minor misdemeanour. Just calm down! People are very happy to be abusive towards women drivers in a way they certainly wouldn’t be if they were walking in the street.

“I find it unnerves these road rage men if you are charming in reply. If they accuse you of driving too close to them, I say ‘I was so enraptured by your smile, I couldn’t get close enough’.

“The history of manners is interesting – did you know that the Egyptians had books on manners too? But then how could anyone sit round a table together to eat and not kill each other with sharp objects unless they had manners?

“I don’t think it’s just a problem with the younger generation, as some young people have beautiful manners. I think it’s more noticeable among my generation.

“We seem to have forgotten our manners and could do with a reminder.”

We can expect politeness personified when Sandi appears in the Midlands next week. As part of the inaugural Comedy Hullabaloo taking place in Stratford-upon-Avon for four days over the bank holiday weekend, she is performing her one-woman show My Valentine at the RSC’s Courtyard Theatre, the stage trod perhaps most famously by David Tennant during his Hamlet.

“I’ve been to Stratford-upon-Avon many times as a tourist, taking my kids around the sites and watching RSC productions, but this will be different,” she says.

“I wanted to play that theatre. To follow in the footsteps of Doctor Who himself, how exciting!

“I’ll be talking for 75 minutes. It’s not a stand-up show really, it’s more like ‘an evening with’. I took a two-hour show on tour last year and had a great time. I’ll be coming straight from the Hay-on-Wye festival so I should be match fit.

“The range of topics I talk about is mind-boggling, really. It’s very much about anecdotes, as I’m in my anecdotage.

“There’s quite a bit about history, as I love that. There’s a history quiz, with a very fine, surprise prize. I only have to pose about six questions to find a winner. People know less about history than they think.

“There might also be a Q&A part with the audience, which is always the best bit as people ask such surprising things.

“One woman in Bradford asked my bra size. I couldn’t remember so she had to come up on stage and have a look.”

She does refer to her size in the show, making fun of her short stature.

“I’m 5ft tall exactly,” she says. “It’s not a problem, we have everything on low shelves at home, it’s fine.”

The law graduate lives with her civil partner, psychotherapist Debbie Toksvig. She has three grown-up children with her previous partner – daughters Jessica and Megan and son Theo.

Born in Copenhagen, she grew up in New York before attending a boarding school in England. At Cambridge University she met Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, writing and performing in the first all-woman Footlights show.

She started her television career in the 1980s in the children’s series No 73, before becoming a team captain on Call My Bluff and a regular on shows like Mock The Week, QI and Have I Got News For You. She is the chair of The News Quiz on Radio 4.

Sandi is fast and funny to talk to, making it tricky to keep up with her quick wit and entertaining comments.

For such an amusing person, the things she chooses to write about are surprisingly dark. Her last novel and a West End play have both been about the horror of war.

Bully Boy, starring Anthony Andrews, was about the lack of mental health care for soldiers returning from Afghanistan, while the novel Valentine Grey has a heroine fighting in the Boer War.

“Both my last book and play are on extremely serious topics,” says Sandi.

“The play is about post traumatic stress. There are odd moments when the audiences laughed – life is not one long tragedy, thank goodness – but they were in tears by the end.

“Valentine Grey is about a forgotten war, the Boer War, during which the British pretty much invented the concentration camp. It was a war of complete horror.

“It’s about a woman dressing up as a man so she can serve in the war, of which there is a surprisingly long history.

“I discovered there was a bicycling regiment in the Boer War, which seemed bizarre, but bicycles were a liberating thing for women. It got them out of the house and they had to change the way they were dressed.

“It made me wonder whether anyone would want a bicycle enough to join a bicycling regiment and get a free one.”

Sandi is now working on half a dozen new projects at once, including a novel about suffragettes and one set in America in 1843, about an Irish family emigrating to avoid the famine and crossing the country to Oregon.

There’s another children’s book coming, plus another play and a musical, as well as her radio and TV work.

Sandi presents the Channel 4 daytime quiz show 1001 Things You Should Know. She seems to know an awful lot, like a female Stephen Fry, so is there anything she’s weak on?

“Sport,” she says firmly. “I’m not interested in sport at all. I find it mind-numbing that people could care enough to follow sports.

“There are 16 pages in the paper today about Alex Ferguson resigning and two pages on government legislation. That’s not right.

“I’m also not very good on celebrity culture. I can pick up a copy of Hello! magazine, flick through it and not know who a single person is.

“My children help me to keep fairly up to date. I have heard of TOWIE (reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex) but I’ve never seen it. I don’t really think that’s something I need to know about.”

Sandi doesn’t watch much television but does express an enthusiasm for American and Danish crime dramas. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy good TV, as she’s spent the last three years writing and producing half-hour plays for Sky Arts.

“I thought we should have some more properly scripted drama on television,” she says.

“I tend to get box sets rather than watch them on TV, as I just don’t have the time. I’ve been getting into the series Castle and White Collar recently.”

Did she get hooked on Broadchurch? Does she watch Doctor Who? No, and no.

But she does have an opinion on the Time Lord. She says: “Surely it’s time for a female Doctor Who? He can regenerate into anyone, so it ought to be a woman next, I’d have thought. Or how about a black woman. Even better!”

* Sandi Toksvig appears at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on May 26. For tickets ring 0844 800 1114 or go to www.comedyhullabaloo.com.

Star line-up for new comedy festival

THE Comedy Hullabaloo is a new four-day comedy festival, run from May 23-26 in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Venues include the Courtyard Theatre, Swan’s Nest Hotel and the Boat Club, plus a tent erected by the river.

The line-up of top names includes Ed Byrne, Al Murray, Milton Jones and Mark Watson, as well as Sandi Toksvig.

Also appearing are Miles Jupp, Roisin Conaty, Justin Moorhouse, Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan.

Ed Bartlam, director of Underbelly which is staging the festival, says: “We’re hugely excited about Comedy Hullabaloo. The idea is to create a real weekend festival atmosphere, where audiences get to see fantastic mixed-bill shows in a friendly environment and where they can see more than one show in an evening.”

RSC director of event Geraldine Collinge adds: “One of Shakespeare’s great skills was his ability to write comedy, so it only seems fitting that we welcome Comedy Hullaballoo to Stratford-upon-Avon.”