Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor known for the everyman charmer in Cold Feet and the cynical cop in Murphy's Law, also starred in Bloody Sunday.
On the island
Eight records
Well, this is an old Irish ballad called The Green Glens of Antrim. It was my mother's favourite song. My mother is from the Glens of Antrim up in Carnloch. And it was something she signed to me as a child, and when I then became a parent myself, it was something I signed to my two girls.
In my extreme arrogance I didn't want to let either the deceased John or their life Paul down by picking just one, so I picked If I Fell, which uses the both of them.
I was amazed and astonished by the fantastic access of Slade. And in my room, you know, now with kids, as you know yourself, there's so much in the kids' room now. I mean I had a poster of George Best, a poster of Manchester United and a poster of Slade. They sort of to me promised that there was excitement out there and no more so than in this song Come On Through the Night.
The undertones through that were this raw, magnificent, superb band. And I would have loved to have picked Teen H Kicks, but I think Mr. Peel had the monopoly on that. But this is my other favourite, which starts with a whistle. It's called Get Over You.
Come Fly with MeFavourite
Frank Sinatra with Count Basie and His Orchestra
I've often said I'd give up all my acting just to uh be frank for one night walking onto a state. And uh this is him singing live at the Sands with Count Basie and the song is Come Fly.
When I hear it it just reminds me of the very beginning of my career and, you know, drinking Guinness in the evening and singing songs and well before fame or success and uh there's an innocence to it that um I'll never forget and to Adri I'll always be eternally grateful.
I've really picked this one not only because it was the title attract to Film India with Milo Winterbottom, Welcome to Sarajevo, but you just can't believe how Van wrote this. It's a cacophony of different things kind of shouting at each other, but somehow out of it comes this piece of music which stirs the soul the way young lovers do.
I read last year about this girl called Laura Marling, an eighteen year old from Reading, who's about a musical prodigy. I bought the album and played it in the car with Peggy and Mary and we the three of us were just immediately put into a trance and it's something we share. It's just for my two daughters and I and um I'll always have them as long as I have uh the memory of this song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:45Was [Bloody Sunday] some sort of personal watershed for you too in some way, maybe connecting with Northern Ireland and Northern Irish?
It certainly was, because I I I grew up fairly distanced from the troubles, you know, even though I had a fairly idyllic upbringing, or so my parents kept telling me. But I wasn't really connected to the history of where I came from. I mean, I was culturally. … It not only taught me a bit about where I came from, it reminded me why I love it, and it also reminded me very much why I love acting and why I think for the first time I was able to see that maybe it had worth.
Presenter asks
9:56Did the Protestant work ethic stop you from feeling like [acting] was a real job?
I think so, but you know, to tell you the truth, I've worked an awful lot the last twenty years. So if anything, the Protestant worker I think is the very boy that has uh made me work as much as I do and has given me the the belief to to to work as much as I've done. So um I think only now do I realize that all along I kind of felt that I fitted in the the job that I do.
Presenter asks
11:50How did your parents respond to [you dropping out of university]?
The reaction was very poor. My mother um didn't talk to me for about a month. And um and what are you? … Oh I terrified, you know what would happen to me.'Cause she probably knew what kind of an Egypt I was, you know, and knew that it wasn't a very good marriage.
The keepsakes
The book
The collective writings of James Lawton
James Lawton
I could read Jim Forever. He's wonderful.
The luxury
I wouldn't mind a glass of wine at the end of every night, so or actually I'd like a bottle of wine at the end of every night
Presenter asks
19:52How did you handle the sort of the amount of tabloid attention you got?
You know, I think uh certainly I've had my fair share of it. Uh self-inflicted, unquestionably a lot of it. Um it can be very invasive. But nevertheless that is the world. You know, I don't necessarily regret anything that the papers wrote about me. I don't necessarily regret that there were photographers uh at times when you didn't want them. I perhaps regret some of the things I've done in my life and I perhaps even more so regret uh that we live in a society where there is such an appetite for that, but I can't really blame anyone else for uh some of the mistakes I've made.
Presenter asks
21:07How much contact did you have with Ivan Cooper [for Bloody Sunday]?
I went to m spend a day with Ivan in Derry and persuaded him to do the march. Now, I even hadn't done the march in thirty years because I even felt culpable for what happened, but I persuaded him to do the march and it took him back thirty years, and it was an incredible odyssey for him, I think, but also for me, because it really helped me see just what it meant to that city, what it meant to the future of Northern Ireland, you know, what what happened after that.
Presenter asks
26:10How do they deal with the bad boy stuff in the press? Do [your family] give you a hard time about it?
They wouldn't be that keen on it now, I have to say. I think ultimately, you know, they they're they're sisters that love a brother and they're parents that love a son. And if there was any difficulties, I remember I got a card from my mother, my mother's not that well now, and I remember getting a card from her saying, Well, you'll always be my son and I'll always love you So that's kind of forgiving enough, I think.
“I think there's good things of having three sisters. I mean, you know, people say you must have been spoiled rotten, and I've always thought the spoiler is a euphemism for being loved, actually.”
“I've always said I'd give up all my acting just to uh be frank for one night walking onto a state.”
“It's like a slow uh disappearance. You know, I was home there a while ago when my mum went out. uh for a walk, desperate to get out, you know, and this is before she's now in a in a home. … And uh she was desperate to go for a walk late at night up in Castle Rock, you know, by the sea and the wind's howling, the rain's coming down and and I said, Oh, I'll come out with you and she said, No, no, but I mean I followed her out and just to see a woman kind of totter off into the distance, you know, is very um uh painful, you know, it's like her t tottering off from your life.”