Larry Lamb has revealed he feels the end is near as he candidly opened up about his mortality and admitted death is on his mind.
The Gavin and Stacey star, 77, will celebrate his 78th birthday in October, as he confessed: ‘The older I get the more I think about how much I love life, but the more I think about how much I love life, the more it makes me think about death.’
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Larry, who lives the majority of his time in Normandy, explained that each year he and his friend go to tidy up the graves in a graveyard.
Revealing how the visit made him confront his mortality he said: ‘It all started me thinking more about facing it realistically, because sadly, I don’t want to sign up for that bit at all, but in the end you are going to have to.’
Larry has four children, including 45-year-old TV presenter George Lamb, and daughters Vanessa, 56, Eloise, 26, and Eva, 22.
Discussing his close bond with his children he gushed how important it is for him to spend as much time with them as he can.
Larry Lamb, 77, has confessed he is ‘thinking more about death’ and feels the end is near in a candid chat about his mortality
Discussing his close bond with his children he gushed how important it is for him to spend as much time with them as he can (pictured with his daughters Eloise, 26, and Eva, 22 in 2017)
‘I couldn’t get home for Father’s Day this year, so my two baby daughters – both in their twenties – insisted that we have a belated celebration the next Sunday.
‘Marking Mother’s and Father’s Day is very important for them, because the older I get, of course the more important it is for me, and they always give me a meaningful, little gift that they chose between them.’
He continued: ‘It just becomes more and more obvious to me that it’s an opportunity for them to write me a card or a letter and to tell me exactly how much they love me, and why.
‘So I sat there basking in their love, in the sunshine and just realising how lucky I was, and what makes me, and drives me to keep doing whatever I can, to stay alive for as long as I can to give them a dad for as long as I can.
‘Somewhere out there – I see it now and again, flickering down the end of its kind of long, nicely illustrated tunnel there’s a sign, and it says, “Way Out,” and I know that’s the way I’m going.’
Larry explained he writes poems to help him cope with death to make the thought of it easier to deal with.
‘I started to write little poems about it with a friend of mine, and it really makes it much easier for me to deal with, because I was always very frightened of it, and it was full of mystery.
‘I didn’t really know – I’ve not been encumbered with any kind of religion at all. It’s kind of pick it up as you go along.’
He confessed: ‘The older I get the more I think about how much I love life, but the more I think about how much I love life, the more it makes me think about death’ (pictured with his son George, now 45, in 2014)
Larry also revealed he writes poems to help him cope with death to make the thought of it easier to deal with (pictured with George as a baby in 1981)
Larry also revealed he was friends with the late Dame Maggie Smith after they first crossed paths at the beginning of his acting career (pictured in 2023)
Larry also revealed he was friends with the late Dame Maggie Smith after they first crossed paths at the beginning of his acting career.
The star explained: ‘I hadn’t seen Maggie Smith in person since she was in Canada, at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford Ontario, where I was starting out my acting career.
‘Our eyes met across a big room in a London club, where a lot of us were celebrating the life of a wonderful, long actor who we’d all loved, and we met each other’s eyes, and she smiled at me and mouthed, “Larry Lamb,” and we walked across to each other and we hugged, and we kissed and we just stood back looking at each other.
‘Staring into each other’s eyes and the years just flying by, and she just said, “I hate being old.”
‘We stayed in touch over the next few years, but it was only ever on the phone.
‘We never got together – she was rather reluctant to go out – and I kept phoning her regularly, and then I left it off.
‘Then all of a sudden I heard that she’d died, and I thought well there’s no way to connect, that’s that.
‘[Then] right out of the blue, I got a phone call from one of her sons, Chris Larkin. I said to him, “I don’t think I’ve spoken to you since you were seven years-old in Canada.”
‘He laughed and he said, “You’re right, but [brother] Toby and I are going through mum’s telephone book, and any name that doesn’t have a line through it is invited to the funeral”.’
