The places that changed my life: Griff Rhys Jones

SUFFOLK, ENGLAND

I have to start here. Many years ago my dad made what seemed to this eight-year-old a momentous journey in a small boat from the flat Essex marshes to the beautiful, swelling, corn-coloured, wood-clothed river system of coastal Suffolk. It defined beauty. I live there now. I have built a garden. I intend to finish there one day I hope.

FINLAND

Smith and Jones got big in Finland. [Comedian and collaborator Mel Smith and I] were asked to make a film celebrating the country for Ronald Reagan – on his way to a Helsinki summit. It was then broadcast as a Christmas special to all Finns. It is a northern world of wonders. There are 80,000 islands along the south coast. I later traversed them and wrote my first book about it: To the Baltic with Bob.

LONDON

I grew up in the outer suburbs and spent my early years circling the town, moving ever closer to the centre of this city, like a plane looking for a place to land. So now I live some of the time in the West End in the middle of a glorious, ever-unfolding theatre of history. And I now know there is no centre to London. The city is a great web of interconnecting threads. I learnt so much about it and other cities making films for television.

WALES

My homeland, which I pretty well ignored for 50 years until I started working there and rued what I had missed. Beautiful, mysterious and in places the finest example of "the best English countryside" in the world. I reckon I've explored more of it than most of my fellow countrymen, who live there.

ITALY

I consume books like hamburgers, but every now and then one tastes of something unique. I am surprised how many of these special dishes are about Italy or places in Italy. Naples '44 by Norman Lewis. Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi. War in Val D'Orcia by Iris Origo. It's a long list. Italy has become a place of pilgrimage. I keep going back. It is inexhaustible. Towns, art and culture. And food. Don't forget the food. My best place is a dockside cafe with an espresso at 8am.

Griff Rhys Jones is a British comedian, actor and star of the iconic Not the Nine O'Clock News. His stand-up show Where Was I? is touring Australia this October. See livenation.com.au