Katherine Parkinson
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Actress, comedian and playwright Katherine Parkinson shares her favourite music with Michael Berkeley.
Two years out of drama school and heavily in debt, Katherine Parkinson was offered a part in a new television comedy series The IT Crowd. As all fans of the cult series know, she played Jen, the hopeless boss of two computer geeks \\u2013 she was the so-called \\u201cnormal\\u201d one. The series ran from 2006 to 2013, with audiences of two million. For Katherine Parkinson, it made her career, winning her a British Comedy Award and a Bafta.
Since then Katherine Parkinson has appeared in everything from stage productions of Sophocles and Chekhov to television sci-fi drama Humans as well as Doc Martin and the sitcom The Kennedys. She has also moved into writing: her play about three people sitting for a painter premiered on television during lockdown.
Katherine chooses music by John Tavener, George Gershwin and Thomas Tallis, and polyphonic singing she discovered while filming in Georgia. She tells Michael how she tried to channel her inner Cecilia Bartoli during singing lessons at drama school, and how she had to pretend to be good at housework for her Olivier-nominated role in Home, I\\u2019m Darling at the National Theatre. And she talks movingly about her affection for her late father-in-law, the actor Trevor Peacock.
Producer: Jane Greenwood\\nA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3
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