The British comedian, David Mitchell, is the eponymous hero of Ludwig, a BBC series set in contemporary Cambridge. David plays a crossword setter, who finds himself solving murders in the university town. Here is an excerpt from an article in diary form, which he wrote for a recent edition of the magazine Radio Times, to mark the release of the second series of the show. The entry below covers one of the days David was in Cambridge for filming and the Chaplaincy makes an appearance.
5 September 2025
Tonight, Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping, the first sketch show that Robert Webb and I have done on TV since 2010, starts going out on Channel 4. But it would be very old-fashioned of me to think of this as its launch night – obviously a sketch has already gone out on the internet. It’s “The Airport Security Sketch”, a depiction of the terror that airport security people induce in passengers about whether or not they’re supposed to have removed their shoes, belts and watches, and whether or not they should put their laptops separately in a tray. I play a nervous passenger. For the filming, I wore a wig to differentiate it from my normal self, and when my baby daughter came on set she was massively freaked out and wouldn’t look me in the face.
It seems to have gone down well online. At least, people who are experts in computer things have made pleased noises, in a way that makes me think it doesn’t really mean anything. I go along with it because it feels Luddite not to but I wish television was like it used to be.
Having said that, I don’t watch the first episode on TV because I’m having dinner in Cambridge with my friend Paul. Ludwig is set in Cambridge, so the production has de-camped here and I’ve spent most of today walking around the streets making deductions. Or looking like I am.
It was when I lived in Cambridge, as a student in the 1990s, that I read Maigret and Raymond Chandler and dreamt that one day I, too, might be a pretend detective. It’s a dream come true to be back here actually doing it. But Cambridge is an absolute nightmare to film in. It looks great, but you have to bring in a lot of vehicles full of lights and cameras and actors and make-up artists, and this city wasn’t built for traffic. So they set up a “unit base” on the outskirts of Cambridge, and baffled drivers who don’t know the area try to negotiate their way through with the aid of Google Maps until they reach some bollards and a Cyclists Only sign and I say, “I can get out, I think I know the way from here.”
Paul was my college roommate, and is now living here because he’s the Catholic chaplain of the University. This feels very eminent and grown-up. Last year, he invited me to give the address at the Catholic Chaplaincy annual dinner.
I said yes because it was Paul asking, but I felt a bit of an imposter. For example: I don’t know what you’d assume about the person who gives the address at the Cambridge Catholic Chaplaincy annual dinner but you might, for example, expect that person to be Catholic.
The previous year the address was given by His Beatitude the Cardinal Patriarch of the Chaldeans. Now, I don’t like to jump to conclusions about people from their names or job titles but he did sound like he might be a Catholic.
