Think growing some fuzz on your top lip for Movember is impressive? Mike Bubbins hasn’t shaved his moustache for 15 years. “Growing up, all the people I admired like Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck had a moustache,” explains the Welsh actor, writer and comedian. “My stag night had a Welsh 1970s rugby theme; there were some great taches in that era so I grew a moustache just for the occasion. Afterwards, I told a friend that I missed the moustache. He said: ‘Grow it back then.’ I said: ‘I’m not gonna get TV work if I’ve got a moustache.’ He said: ‘But you might get work because you’ve got a moustache.’ It was like Samson’s hair, and I haven’t looked back since …”
Bubbins’s love of all things 70s and moustachioed helps explain the idea behind his BBC sitcom, Mammoth. In it, Bubbins plays Tony Mammoth, a 70s Welsh PE teacher who is cryogenically frozen in an avalanche in 1979. When he awakes in 2024, he goes back to a teaching job he technically never left, and in the process is forced to navigate the changes to the modern world since he last lived in it, from same-sex relationships to traffic pollution (“Always keep the engine running” is his outdated advice).
