The best performance you’ve seen on TV Michael Chiklis in The Shield, which may be my favourite TV show ever. Before Chiklis took on the role of Detective Vic Mackey, you would never have picked him to play a maverick, complicated, tragic antihero. But he’s so engaging. The character is despicable, yet somehow, through his performance, you still want Mackey to get away with the all terrible things he continues doing through seven seasons. The show doesn’t get the respect it deserves. The show you wish you had hosted The Big Breakfast: it made me want to be a presenter. I watched Johnny Vaughan and knew I wanted to be as good as him. It was such a fun, lively, intimate show. You felt as if you were part of something. My first ever gig in TV was working on [Channel 4’s] RI:SE – an extremely pale imitation. My excitement to be there quickly wore off when I realised everyone hated it and it wasn’t very good. RI:SE was not worth getting up that early for, but the Big Breakfast would have been. The show that should never have been cancelled … Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – it’s criminal there are only six episodes. The show is genuinely insane – it’s set in a hospital built over a portal to hell. Garth Marenghi, played by the genius Matthew Holness, is an author, dreamweaver and visionary in a show within a show. There’s an episode with an invasion of alien broccoli; another where scotch mist descends over the hospital. Marenghi writes a book with the title The Ooze: Can Water Die?. I implore anyone who hasn’t watched it to do so, and then to start a petition for a reboot. I would use my own money to make the second series. … and the show that should be cancelled Richard Osman’s House of Games. It is too good, too fun, too clever and – having been on it myself – too fun to be part of. Frankly, it’s perfect. It’s exactly the sort of show I’d have loved to come up with. Honestly, it’s annoying. Just get rid of it. Your favourite TV moment In the Succession season one finale, when Roman Roy [Kieran Culkin] is at his sister’s wedding. He knows his rocket is launching in China and goes to check how it has gone. He heads to the bathroom, takes out his phone, and watches it explode on takeoff. He slides his phone back into his pocket and rejoins the party. Both the performance and conceit are perfect. Your favourite show when you were 10 Blackadder; it felt very risque. One of my most vivid childhood memories is making my dad nearly choke in a mixture of horror and glee, when we were having dinner with my grandparents and I quoted the Baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells: “I’ll do anything to anything: animal, vegetable or mineral.” It’s a great line, but a 10-year-old probably shouldn’t have been saying it. The role you wish you had never turned down About nine years ago, I was offered a part in a Peruvian feature film. The director – Alvaro Velarde – found me after watching old T4 clips online. He wanted me to go to Peru to be in his Spanish-language movie. To be clear, I don’t speak Spanish and I cannot act. I asked if the role was an English TV presenter and he said no, I would be a moustachioed Peruvian man unhappy with his wife and in love with the male owner of the hotel he was staying in. Velarde was somehow convinced I would be perfect. Daisy Haggard was cast as my wife; she was just told to learn Spanish and to bring her own shoes. In the end, we both pulled out, which I very much regret. Rick Edwards co-hosts The Chop: Britain’s Top Woodworker, which begins on Thursday at 9pm on Sky History