Ben Whishaw, quite apart from being one of the best British actors we have, is an expert dunker of his biscuits in tea. I’ve seen it: he’s a McVitie’s ninja, with a method all his own. We meet one afternoon in the offices of a London film company and I get the chance to observe his distinctive work first-hand, as digestive after digestive gets taken up by Whishaw, then dipped (sometimes double-handed) into a cuppa that he props on a table in front of him. Each biscuit gets submerged for so long, you suppose there’s no chance of it ever coming out whole. Each biscuit later re-emerges, sodden, milliseconds from ruin, still intact.
“I’m no good at interviews,” Whishaw, 41, apologises, right away.