Ben Whishaw: ‘Sometimes, with straight actors playing gay parts, I think: I don’t believe you!’

He's been Paddington, Keats, and now a doctor in This Is Going to Hurt. He talks about his off-stage shyness and why he wasn't delighted by the reveal of Q's sexuality in No Time to Die

Ben Wishaw, 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," Wishaw, 41, apologises, right away.