Alexander Armstrong's mother hates it when you call him Xander
Alexander Armstrong has opened up about the origins of his nickname, and why his mum isn't a fan.
Alexander Armstrong's mother is furious when people call him Xander.
The Pointless star has revealed while it was his parents who started shortening his name as a child, his mum isn't best pleased that it's become so widely used.
Speaking to Caitlin Moran and Adam Frost on the Outsiding podcast, he said: "It's a weird one, Xander, because it's the second half of a name.
"It sounds very... It's like if you ever met someone called Christopher and they went by Topher. You'd think, 'ooh, I'm not... Ooh, I don't know if I want to call you that'.
"It's a bit... We've sort of come a little bit inside. We've left the Chris. And Alex… Xander's a bit like that.
"It's a bit sort of... It was my... You know, it was my parents' nickname for me when I was very little, so it’s kind of fine for parents and it’s somehow become, much to my mother's fury, she still says 'I do wish people wouldn't call you Xander.' ”
The AGE-year-old singer and TV star also reflected on growing up in Northumberland, "on the edge of the moor".
He recalled: "We lived in this old farm just in surrounded by thistley, thistley fields and a few old tractors that didn't work but they're really fun for us.
"You could just sit in them for hours, and the bouncy sort of tractor seats so that was fun. It was beautiful.
"Mum and dad sort of reclaimed the land around us because it hadn't really been a garden... The house had been tumbling down for years and years so we were the first people to live in it for a very long time."
He described their surroundings as "idyllic", even if he acknowledged there could have been drawbacks he wasn't aware of as a child.
Alexander added: "I do often think, I just I have to get real and look back through my childhood and think, 'Surely there were there must have been things that didn't feel like a Disney film'.
"But it really was, it was fabulous.”
Outsiding is available on all podcast providers and YouTube.
