Interview Simon Pegg

“The World’s End is the most personal of the three films we’ve written together.”

For a man who once played the lead in a film called Run, Fat Boy, Run, Simon Pegg is looking remarkably slim as he takes his seat opposite me.

The shedding of a few pounds and toning of a few muscles is a sign of how the comedy actor’s life has changed since 2007’s box office hit.

With Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams all fans and subsequently work colleagues on movies such as The Adventures of Tintin, Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek Into Darkness Simon has found himself living a healthier Hollywood lifestyle of late.

But he has always remained a homeboy at heart, even if he does admit the food is better across the Atlantic.

“There’s nothing quite like putting your head down on your own pillow,” says Simon, who retains a house in Hertfordshire with his Glasgow-born wife Maureen and four-year-old daughter Matilda.

“I love working abroad, it’s always an interesting experience, but it’s lovely to be able to work so close to home and be with your family.”

Filmed in the Hertfordshire market towns of Welwyn and Letchworth, Simon couldn’t have been much closer to home while working on his latest film The World’s End.

“It was great being so close to home,” he says. “An hour after finishing filming every night I was sat in my living room.”

The World’s End is the final film in the so-called Cornetto Trilogy the series of films written by Simon and long-time collaborator Edgar Wright but it’s an accompaniment rather than a sequel to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Simon plays Gary King, a 40-year-old wastrel whose life has never recovered from the hangover of one June night in 1990 when he and four friends went on an epic 12-pint pub crawl to celebrate the end of their school days.

They’ve all since moved away, and his friends (played by Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan) have gone on to live normal lives but Gary wants to mark their 40th birthdays by “putting the band back together again” and repeating their unforgettable, alcohol-fuelled excursion.

The glamour comes from Gary’s old flame Sam, played by Rosamund Pike, whose role is based on a real-life ex of Edgar’s.

But when the friends return to their home town they find the place has been invaded by aliens.

“We learned on Shaun of the Dead that it was possible to combine serious situations with comedy and heart,” explains Simon.

“World’s End is linked to the two other movies in that it’s an individual facing off against a collective but it’s the most personal of the three films we’ve written together.

“That said, I’ve never been a big pub crawler.

“I don’t really go to pubs because I don’t drink but, when I do, I tend to want to stay in the one venue.

“The ironic thing about Letchworth is that it was built by Quakers as a dry town, there was only one pub in the whole place, so we had to turn the station and the cinema into pubs for the film.”

The surroundings for our interview were another sign of the status Simon now has in the industry. The first time I met him was in 1999 in an office at Channel 4’s London HQ for a chat about Spaced (his first collaboration with Edgar Wright and Nick Frost). Now we’re in a room at Claridge’s Hotel.

But does his star status stop him from attending a reunion with old friends like the one his character organises in the film?

“I hope not,” he says. “I have a recurring dream about going to my school reunion and I don’t know why. I guess it’s about going back to where you’re from and it’s one of the preoccupations that will appeal to people about this movie.

“I have been back to my school for a reunion. I also met up with some of my college friends recently, which was nice. We had a really lovely night talking away to each other about the old days.”

And not an alien in sight.