I was, frankly, an enormous baby. Twelve pounds and five ounces on delivery into the world. I always towered over my classmates by about a foot.
Before I knew it, I was a six foot seven inch, rather shy 16-year-old Etonian, who expended most of his energy trying to make himself as small in the world as he could, largely unsuccessfully; trying to make his schoolmates laugh, relatively successfully; and trying to work out what his place was in the world.
My mother, father, and sister, though a combustive combination, seemed to combust in some kind of synchronicity. No matter how explosive their interactions, they were a unit. I would often sit with them at supper with the mien of a distant cousin or perhaps a lodger in an Agatha Christie novel who politely eats his boiled eggs and kippers and then goes back to his room to continue planning the murdering of secretaries in Brighton.
I never escaped, however, the feeling that I was wearing somebody else’s skin, that I was fundamentally other to my new friends who had come from so many different worlds and backgrounds to the one that had sort of, rather unsuccessfully, shaped me. They all seemed so comfortable in their own skin.
Seven years of working in London followed, where I continued to cosplay as sophisticated citizen of the world rather than an emotionally-repressed public schoolboy who struggled to form meaningful romantic relationships and was concerned that all his colleagues secretly despised him. Fun.
The problem was, we would come home. We’d visit the UK and I would feel the weight of my own discomfort settle back onto my shoulders. Then, in 2020, my boss, Rob McElhenney, decided to buy Wrexham AFC, a football club in North Wales and appoint me executive director.
square CALUM SCOTT Calum Scott: The therapy that saved my life - and healed my body dysmorphia
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I realised that I couldn’t pretend to be something I was not anymore. I was a kind of silver-spooned dickhead… Just one who was more than his schooling and aware of his gross privilege. The kind that loved football and loved people and loved people that loved football. The kind that had desperately wanted to be part of something and finally was. Embraced by the Club and the town, who immediately saw me for who I was – who I am – I finally have been given permission to embrace myself.
The last five years have been the happiest of my life. Although I did get a dog about four years ago, so maybe it’s that?
This week I have been…
Reading… I have, of late, been treating myself to a re-read of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Günther novels, a Chandleresque series of the hardest-boiled detective fiction of the last 20 years. Bernie, a rumpled preux chevalier former police detective, turned private eye, picks his way through the seedy underbelly of an increasingly Nazi 1930s Berlin, kissing beautiful women, getting blackjacked by goons and eventually finding the murderer. All while firing out bon mots with an acrid cynicism that could strip the paint off a panzer at a hundred yards.
Imagine if Philip Marlowe also had the Gestapo breathing down his neck. Brilliantly plotted, incredibly researched, highly recommended.Rehearsing… I am in a play at the moment. Or am shortly to be. We started rehearsals today and it is both wildly daunting and incredibly exciting. It’s been an age since I was last on stage and I find myself worrying about remarkably straightforward things. How loud should I speak? Can I get away with my character having his hands in his pockets the whole time, so I don’t have to worry about what to do with them? Will the cast remain friends forever after the show finishes?
Do hope so. I’ve only known them for a week and I already love them.Not restraining… myself. My wife, Megan, and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary this week and spent a lovely few days in Versailles, walking various halls of King Louis’ and peering into the bedroom of Marie Antoinette. For three days, we mocked those of our fellow tourists who felt the need to ask our tour guides questions that they clearly already knew the answer to: “And the ladies of the court would follow the Queen’s fashion would they not?” “Am I right in thinking Louis XV was actually Louis XIV’s great-grandson?”
Unfortunately, on the last day I failed to restrain myself and ended up asking if the last surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was called Marie-Thérèse, when I knew full well she was. The guide’s withering look will stay with me forever.
All episodes of Season 4 of Welcome to Wrexham are available to stream now on Disney+. Humphrey will also be performing at the National Theatre in The Estate from 9 July to 23 August 2025.
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