Hugh Laurie’s parents hid the fact his dad was an Olympic gold medal rower – even when the youngster asked if he could handle a boat. The Blackadder and Fry And Laurie actor later learned dad Ran competed at the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics overseen by Adolf Hitler, where black US athlete Jesse Owens won three golds.
Ran achieved golden glory of his own in the coxless pairs event at the 1948 London Games.
But Hugh, 63, who himself became a young international rower, said when he was growing up he had no idea his father had done Britain proud. He told radio station LBC’s Full Disclosure podcast: “That was concealed from me – very much so.
“I remember my parents laughing a lot because we were in a boat, we’d gone fishing, and my dad took the oars. I said to my mother, ‘Does he know how to row?’
“And they laughed. And I said, ‘What are you laughing at?’ And they didn’t tell me.
“They didn’t tell me until years later that he had actually won an Olympic medal for that… not in a fishing boat.”
Ran died aged 83 from Parkinson’s disease in 1998.
At 18, Hugh was a member of the junior coxed pair that won the British national title, before representing the GB team at the 1977 Junior World Rowing Championships.
At Cambridge University, he was on course to become an Olympic-standard rower. But he had to give up after contracting glandular fever.
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