Vicky McClure

May 2015

The last time we saw Vicky McClure on screen was a brief glimpse during the BBC’s live coverage of the British Academy Television Awards.
The 32-year-old from Wollaton was there to, we all hoped, pick up her second Bafta, after winning Best Leading Actress four years ago for her reprised role as Lol in This Is England ‘88.
The only person confident that she wasn’t going to win was Vicky.
“I didn’t expect the nomination in the first place,” says the actress, who has also been seen in ITV’s Broadchurch alongside David Tennant.
The nod was for her role as DC Kate Fleming in Line Of Duty, the police drama that she is currently filming a third series for in Belfast.
As it turned out, she lost out on a second Bafta, this time for Best Supporting Actress, to Gemma Jones for her role in Marvellous, based on the true story of Stoke City kit-man Neil Baldwin.
“Marvellous was my favourite piece of TV last year so losing to Gemma was more than fine by me,” says Vicky, who was papped on the red carpet wearing a full length white dress by London-based designer Osman Yousefzada.
So busy was she before the ceremony last month, that it wasn’t a dress she had time to pick herself.
“My publisher is a good friend and he knows what I like so he got everything arranged,” she laughs.
Vicky was there with other members of the Line of Duty cast as the show, BBC2’s biggest ratings winner in ten years, was also up for Best Drama, while co-star Keeley Hawes was nominated in the Best Leading Actress category.
“It’s going really well,” she says of the filming that started in April and runs until July.
“The scripts are stronger than ever and there’s a really nice vibe on set. The new additions to the cast are incredible.”

Among them is fellow Nottingham actor Arsher Ali, who starred in The Missing and Arthur and George.
“It’s been great to have a Notts lad on set,” she says, although the pair’s allegiances to football clubs are on opposite sides of the Trent.
Was Forest fan Arsher, who grew up in Sherwood, kind about Notts County’s relegation?
“Nothing was really said,” laughs the Magpies fan.
“I think everyone was kind enough not to mention it.”
Having another Nottinghamian on set has helped ease Vicky’s longings to be back in her city.
“We’ve been chatting a lot about Notts, which has been great. We’ve filmed scenes together and we did try and get an ‘ey up mi duck’ into one of them,” she laughs.
“But that’ll probably be cut.”
There are rare breaks from filming when she has been home. Soon after the Baftas she was at Notts County for Football Rocks, a charity event organised by the club with Jake Bugg. Vicky appeared in the Clifton chart-topper’s video Two Fingers and they have since become friends.
But the main reason she was there was because boyfriend Jonny Owen was playing.
The couple met three years ago during the making of the rock ‘n’ roll comedy film Svengali, written by and starring Jonny.
The Welshman and our Vicky, who appeared in the film as his girlfriend, first settled in London but the draw home was too much for Vicky and the couple now live in Toton.
“I love the city and I love the people – they remind me a lot of those in South Wales,” says Jonny, who has appeared in TV dramas Shameless and Monroe.
“Everyone is very friendly and open. I can’t speak highly enough of people in Nottingham. They have made me feel very welcome.”
Jonny, who produces shows for Notts TV, is currently making a major film about Nottingham Forest’s legendary European Cup wins.
On another swift visit home, Vicky and her man had a meal at La Rock in Sandiacre, a restaurant, which earned the very first five star review from the Nottingham Post’s long-serving restaurant critic, the Food Sleuth.
“It was some of the best service I’ve ever had. And the maître d’ was so lovely. There was nothing pretentious about it and the food was great.”

The former Fernwood Comprehensive School student is a graduate of Nottingham’s Television Workshop, along with Joe Dempsie, Jack O’Connell, Samantha Morton and many others.
It was the two-time Oscar nominee Samantha Morton who spotted her talent at the Workshop and brought her to the attention of director Ian Smith.
Her early screen roles included a spot in daytime soap Doctors, as well as Filth And Wisdom – the first feature film directed by Madonna.
But her big break came after she was cast as Lol in Shane Meadows’ feature film, This Is England, which won him a Bafta.
The third spin-off TV series, This Is England ‘90, has been shot and is due on Channel 4 in September.
Vicky was reunited with fellow “workshoppers” Joe Dempsie, Andrew Shim, Rosamund Hanson, Michael Socha and Chanel Cresswell.
And once again director Meadows insisted the cast improvise each scene.
Says Vicky: “It’s the most fun I’ve had on a set in a long time.”

LeftLion

September 2014

THE story of LeftLion, which began in a flat on Mansfield Road more than a decade ago, runs backwards... and against the grain of magazine publishing trends.
In the beginning there was the website, LeftLion.co.uk in September 2003, followed a year later by a bi-monthly magazine.
After reaching a £10,000 fund-raising target through a five week Kickstarter campaign, the magazine will now be published monthly.
“We don’t plan on going weekly or daily,” laughs editor-in-chief Jared Wilson, who started LeftLion with two friends to celebrate Nottingham’s rich cultural offering.

 “It feels like it’s the right time to do this. A monthly magazine will be a lot better for Nottingham. And the team is ready for it.”
That team is six full-time employees and although Jared, 35, will soon be leaving his job as a copywriter at Nottingham Trent University to go full-time at LeftLion, drawing a salary for the first time, it has relied on voluntary contributions from writers, photographers, designers and other creatives for most of its life.
“When we started there was no independent magazine with an edge,” he says.
“FHP wasn’t a great magazine, City Life is for posh people.”
LeftLion prints 10,000 copies per issue, distributed around pubs, bars, clubs, shops and venues for free.
“They all go,” says Jared from Sherwood.
“If they didn’t we would print less.”

 The first edition featured Shane Meadows. Since then there have been interviews with Nottingham’s most famous musicians, actors, writers, designers, artists and more in 60 issues.

They include Sir Paul Smith, Carl Froch, Su Pollard, Torvill and Dean and Jake Bugg.
“My favourite ones have been Alan Sillitoe, we did the last interview with him, and Ray Gosling. They are the giants whose shoulders we are standing on.”
He adds: “Shane Meadows and Carl Froch are the only times we’ve done a cover photo,” highlighting the magazine’s principle of using an original cover design that incorporates a few of the key elements within each particular edition.

He adds: “There’s so much more to LeftLion than one interview. People will hopefully pick it up to read a number of features within it.
“For example, the next time we run an interview with Jake Bugg, in that same magazine will be two or three up and coming musicians. LeftLion is about promoting culture in the city, it’s not just the icons or the biggest names.”
 Early on they would interview the famous names coming to the city, like a regular entertainment guide, but its chief focus has been on local creatives.
“There’s enough to shout about in Nottingham as it is,” he says.
The Kickstarter campaign included items donated from a number of LeftLion’s ‘friends’, for readers to buy, such as signed Jake Bugg CDs (£100), a signed Paul Smith print (£1,000) and an original ‘Byron Clough’ canvas merging the faces of the two local legends (£500), to a gig or meal in your home.

The campaign, which ends tomorrow, still has a few items left.
“More than 200 people have donated to the campaign, all of who will be named in the first monthly edition,” says Jared, in the LeftLion office in Stoney Street, also home to Just The Tonic HQ and gig promoters I’m Not From London.

“It was started on my credit card and it was advertising that kept us going. The only funding we’ve had started last year and that was from the Nottingham Jobs Fund.

“We’ve just secured some more funding from the Arts Council to do interactive print, which is the sci-fi stuff I used to dream of as a kid. From November you’ll be able to hover your phone over the magazine and it will start talking to you, with videos popping up or audio.”
These sort of projects, part of LeftLion Extended, that has so far included a local music CD compilation called Notts What I Call Music and branded tea towels, are what Jared will be focusing on in his new full-time role.
“It's humbling that a free magazine like us can get such a great level of support from the Nottingham public.
“We would like to thank everyone for the support we have received on this campaign.”

LeftLion will be monthly as of the next issue, available from the end of September.

Jake Bugg: Slumville Sunrise video

October 2013

THE video for Jake Bugg’s next single sees the 19-year-old acting for the first time – and dressed in a shocking tracksuit.
Directed by Bafta winner Shane Meadows, Slumville Sunrise follows the Clifton chart-topper as he is chased through the city after stealing a ring from a jeweller.
The Benny Hill-style pursuit through St Ann’s, Sneinton Market, Holme Pierrepont and other locations ends with him reaching home, where his pregnant girlfriend, played by This Is England and Life’s Too Short actress Rosamund Hanson, is waiting.
Another Nottingham actor in the video is Andrew Shim, who appeared in Meadows’ This Is England and A Room For Romeo Brass.
He joins the chase dressed as Elvis, along with the shop owner, police, a traffic warden, a “granny” and others.
Much of it is shot intentionally clumsily with everyone running on the spot; the action is superimposed on to a backdrop of Nottingham locations.
Meadows said: “I had a great laugh making it. It was the best craic I’ve had in ages.”
The Nottingham-based director, whose documentary about the Stone Roses, Made of Stone, was released on DVD this week, has only made two music videos before, both for Richard Hawley.
“It was nice to do one again,” he said.
“It was an honour to do it for Jake – I owed him big-time for playing at my 40th last year.”
Of the tracksuit Bugg wears in the video, Meadows told the NME: “We wanted to pick the most awful tracksuit we could find – something he just wouldn’t want to wear.”
He described the video as “like a short film” as it is book-ended with two scenes that show Bugg acting for the first time with dialogue.
At the beginning, the musician, dressed in the blue-and-white tracksuit, which M , is seen browsing engagement rings at a jewellery shop in Pelham Street.
He fires a party popper into the face of the shop assistant and runs out with a £20,000 ring, just as the music begins.



He’s seen running through Hockley, Alfreton Road and Talbot Street car park, then in a boat with Meadows at the National Watersports Centre, at Holme Pierrepont.
The closing scene lasts two minutes and is an exchange between Bugg and Hanson.
“I want to have a family,” he tells her.
“Me, you and the baby.”
But as he hands her the ring she says “that’s stolen” and then complains that he doesn’t have the box.
He takes it back and says he’ll “sell it on eBay”.
Bugg acted briefly for the video for his single Two Fingers, alongside Wollaton’s Bafta winner Vicky McClure, but without dialogue.
Slumville Sunrise is taken from his second album Shangri La, due to be released on November 18.
Yesterday, he won Best New Act at the Q Awards.
Next week, he will find out if he wins the 2013 Mercury Music Prize, although he has said: “That’s not why I make music, to get awards. It’s great to be nominated, but the Mercurys don’t mean a whole lot to me.”
His self-titled debut album, which topped the chart last October, is up against the likes of David Bowie, Disclosure and Arctic Monkeys for the award. He is 33/1 in the bookies’ odds, with Disclosure as favourites.
The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on Wednesday, October 30.
He is on a UK tour that will include a “secret” show in Nottingham.

On set report: Best Laid Plans

December 2010

STEPHEN Graham is laying in bed with his eyes closed while a dozen members of the film crew fuss around him.

The actor, last in Nottingham to star in Shane Meadows’ This Is England as the terrifying racist skinhead Combo, looks like he’s catching up on a bit of sleep. He may be thinking about the scene. It‘s hard to tell.

First assistant director Amanda Neal, stood at the end of the bed, shouts “turn over”. Behind me someone responds “turning” and everyone falls silent.

Graham shuffles in the bed then opens his eyes, as if waking from a restless sleep. The whole scene, number 472, lasts 45 seconds.

They do it half a dozen more times until director David Blair seems happy and they move.

Scene 142 finds Graham shouting at a lighting stand. “If you do that again, you’ll be in real trouble,” he barks.

He’s supposed to be bawling at co-star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje but he’s off set today so he has to make do with a piece of camera equipment.

He tries it three more times then we’re done. It’s time for lunch.

I’ve been here for two hours and witnessed what will likely be a minute of the finished film.

We’re two floors above the Tesco Metro in Station Street. The rooms in this sparse and dusty Victorian building have been the HQ for the cast and crew of Best Laid Plans for the past five weeks.

It’s also the setting for the flat shared by lifelong friends Danny (Graham) and Joseph (Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

Danny owes money to a crime boss and he enrolls Joseph to engage in a bare-knuckle fighting tournament in order to win the money to pay him off. But Joseph has a mental age of a seven-year-old and doesn’t understand why his friend is making him do this. 

“It’s a love story,” says Graham, after lunch, with a hot menthol drink under his nose to stave off the effects of a cold.

“It’s a film about two friends.”

And how does Danny’s character compare to Combo?

“They’re miles apart. Danny’s one of these poor people who keeps getting everything wrong. He’s got great intentions but he’s a bit of a fantasist.”

Combo reappeared in This Is England 86 but only very briefly. Why was that?

“I was a bit apprehensive about doing the TV show at first,” says Graham.

“But Shane explained how we could flip it round and show a completely different side to his character. Show the humanity. That was the idea.”

The shoot over the past five weeks has included the streets of Carlton and Sneinton, by the river near Trent Bridge and at Nottingham Contemporary.

Most of the interiors have been shot in Station Street. As well as the bedroom there’s a set for the kitchen/lounge and a bathroom with a grubby lemon suite and porn magazines, with titles such as Naughty Brits, strewn across the floor.

“I don’t mind,” smirks Graham of the unglamorous setting.

“We’ve had no caravans, no Winnebagos or anything like that but the budget’s not there.”

No one is able to tell me exactly what the budget is but it’s likely to be a modest few million.

“With the Film Council closing it’s not easy to get films made in England,” says Graham, his accent as Scouse as can be.

“You take the rough with the smooth,” he adds.

“A few months ago I was in Hawaii, sitting on a beach with me missus and kids. I was going to work for a few hours then coming back for a swim in the sea.”

He was there to film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.

“They’re fantastic to work with. I worked with Johnny before on Public Enemies. I’d consider him a friend. I think it was him who threw my name in the hat for Pirates.

“And Penelope, she’s lovely as well. I’ve been very blessed. I’ve worked with some great people, Leo DiCaprio, Michael Sheen...”

The latter was for The Damned United, in which he played Billy Bremner. Next year, he’ll be seen on the big screen alongside Avatar star Sam Worthington in The Fields and Colin Firth in a remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The 37-year-old has come a long way from the bit parts in Coronation Street, Heartbeat and The Bill, before his big break in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch a decade ago.

A year later he was in Steven Spielberg’s Band of Brothers then Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, with Leonardo DiCaprio. This year the director called him back for the big budget US drama Boardwalk Empire to play Al Capone.

His co-stars in Best Laid Plans are BAFTA winner Maxine Peake (Shameless, Red Riding, Early Doors), David O’Hara (The Departed) and Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who has appeared in GI Joe, The Mummy Returns and The Bourne Identity but is probably best known for playing Mr Eko in Lost. 

Peake and O’Hara had already finished their part and Akinnuoye-Agbaje isn’t around today, having to fly to Berlin at the last minute to attend to his sick father.

I’m told that he’s been staying in character while on set. It’s a method thing. Which is interesting, considering the 6’2 43-year-old is playing a man with the mind of a seven-year-old.

Writer Chris Green is here, though. The former medical insurance salesman based the story, his debut script, loosely on John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men.

“I read the book and saw the parallels between 1920s depression hit America and where I’m from in Salford,” he says.

“It’s always been depression there since the docks closed down in the seventies,” he laughs.

“I just thought it’d be interesting to drop those two characters in to a city like Manchester or Nottingham to see how they’d survive.”

It’s dark but still comical, he says.

“I was influenced by Boys From The Blackstuff, that sort of dark humour. So Danny and Joseph do still have fun, despite the dire circumstances they find themselves in.”

With him is his teenage daughter, who won’t be able to see the finished film as it’ll likely get an 18 certificate because of the violence and strong language.

He was around for the fight scenes filmed last week in the basement of an unfinished office block in Brook Street in the city centre.

“Seeing Adewale as Joseph being beaten up in the cage, looking lost and forlorn and desperate was quite upsetting,” he admits.

It was only this year that he finally quit his job to write full time. All five of his scripts have been picked up to be turned in to feature films.

“I can’t wait to roll up in Leicester Square for the premiere,” he beams.

Director David Blair says the violence is necessary to tell the story but doesn’t think it’s what the film will be known for.

“I don’t want people to be too preoccupied by the fighting,” he says.

“It’s not Sam Peckinpah. At the heart of it are the relationships between Stephen and Adewale and between Stephen and Maxine.

“I don’t want it to be seen as a gangster film. Although, one of my sons asked me, when I told him what the film was about, asked me if Danny Dyer was in it,” he laughs.

He’s not.

The Scottish director was shown the script for Best Laid Plans by Stephen Graham, who he’d worked with on BBC1’s The Street. He also directed Maxine Peake in Jimmy McGovern’s series of dramas, for which he won a BAFTA.

“They’re not necessarily easy to work with,” he admits.

“But all that matters is that they’re good.”

The decision to film in Nottingham was a financial one, thanks to co-funding by Nottingham-based screen commission EM Media. But with schedules running from 9am to 7pm each day, Blair hasn’t had much of a chance to take in the city. Although he did catch up with an old friend, Nottingham writer Stephen Lowe, for a drink.

“It was first time I’d seen him in 13 years, when we were working on something together. We may well revive it, in fact.”

He adds: “An average for any film is 60 to 70 hours a week. Unfortunately the European labour laws don’t apply to us.”

Best Laid Plans is scheduled for release in June.

Paddy Considine

THE moment he picks up the phone, I've just sent a Friend Request to his band's MySpace page.

"Very good, man. Have they accepted you?"

Not yet. I thought you might be online.

"I don't even know how to do it, man."

The band is Riding The Low, an indie five-piece with Paddy as singer-songwriter. Based in his home town of Burton, they've been together 18 months and have already played Nottingham twice, at The Social and Junktion 7.

He has purposefully downplayed his role in the band when they do publicity. It'll never be billed as "featuring The Bourne Ultimatum's Paddy Considine" or "with Hot Fuzz actor Paddy Considine".

"If there are interviews I try and get other members to do them. You can't stop people coming to the show to see the bloke from Dead Man's Shoes but I try and make sure it's a band thing, otherwise it may as well just be me."

Their download-only EP They Will Rob You Of Your Gifts was released this week. They'll be recording a second next month.

Don't the rest of the band rely on you to stump up the cash for recordings?

"No, I'm not doing that, mate. I made that very clear from the beginning."

But they're skanking about the country in a rusty van while you follow in your Mercedes.

"Not quite."

Among the tracks on the EP are Acres of Yvonne and Meat Skanker. They're Paddy's words so what the hell is a meat skanker?

"I'm not telling you," he laughs.

And who's Yvonne?

"Meat Skanker is a kid I went to school with and Yvonne used to be my next-door neighbour when I was a little boy."

So it's autobiographical.

"Yeah man, it's all there, it's not just about strutting around."

While it's early days for the band, it is much the same for the script he is co-writing with Shane Meadows for the movie King Of The Gypsies, based on the life of Nottingham-born bare knuckle fighter Bartley Gorman.

During a 25-year career he fought in a mine shaft, a quarry, at horse fairs, on campsites, in bars, on the streets and on a ship.

Meadows and Considine have already completed the first draft but there is a long way to go, he says.

"We're just trying to find our way through it at the minute. It's not been a particularly easy process."

Hasn't having Gorman's autobiography made it easier to script?

"No, it's had the opposite effect.

"A lot of people are expecting an adaptation of his book and that's the difficult thing. One way we were looking at it was making a story with Bartley's character, with aspects of his life in there.

"We don't know what it will be yet," he admits.

"It's still growing and there's a long way to go."

It will be their first writing collaboration since revenge thriller Dead Man's Shoes, in which Considine starred.

"It's a different process, this one. It's not something pulled out of our imaginations, it's actually based on somebody."

He will take the lead role, which will mean a few extra burgers.

"I'm certainly going to have to do something to beef up a bit, yeah."

He met Gorman, who died in 2002 aged 57, a number of times.

"Shane introduced me to him and I photographed him when I was doing my degree in Brighton," says Considine, who graduated with a first class degree in photography.

"We just became friends. He was great fun. He'd been through some situations and been in some tear-ups but he never came across as a hard man. He never bored you with stories of how tough he was. He was very entertaining, almost like the Muhammad Ali of the gypsies.

"That's why I wanted to be with him because he'd have me laughing and every day was an adventure.

"He felt quite tortured about the thing he chose to do and as he got older felt quite burdened by this reputation. He saw sickness in violence but it was too late to turn the tables."

Gorman, while a local legend in the Burton area, was, says Considine "quite proud" that he was born in Nottingham.

"It's almost too early to even talk about King Of The Gypsies. There's a lot of expectation already and I think that's part of the thing that's hindering the process."

How?

"You can't make a film for other people - you've got to make it for yourself."

He adds: "I can write it with Shane and act in it but Shane has to live with it for a lot longer than I do. So when it'll be out or when it's shot I don't know. It's not my call."

He expects they'll team up again for the second draft in the next couple of months.

The project has already secured £46,000 funding from regional screen agency EM Media, which has also pledged £25,000 to Tyrannosaur, which Considine is scripting for his feature-length directorial debut.

"I'm writing it at the minute and I'm hoping to direct it this time next year.

His debut behind the camera on the short film, Dog Altogether, this year won him a Bafta.

"I'm extremely proud of it, probably more proud of it than anything I've ever done," he says - and the only reason he's agreed to do the talk tonight.

"I'm certainly not doing it to promote myself. I think it's flattering that people are interested in your work."

Directing was always his first love.

"I was actually making a short film when Shane cast me in A Room For Romeo Brass. So that's what I was trying to do.

"The whole process (of directing) was an exploration for me."

So how does he differ as a director to Meadows?

"I don't know, mate. I'm not entirely sure, dude. I do what I do and he does what he does. We're all different, man. I've worked with a lot of directors. Shane's one of them. There's Pawel Pawlikowski, Jim Sheridan, Ron Howard, Paul Greengrass... they all work differently and get different results.

"I've learnt enough on different sets to do my own thing, you know.

"The only difference with Shane is, you know, Paul Greengrass found Matt Damon, De Niro found Scorsese, sometimes you find a director where there's something about you that's coming from a similar place and you can share your experiences. You've got a kind of bond and understanding. That's the luxury I share with Shane.

"How I direct differently from him, I'm not entirely sure, mate."

He bristles when asked if there's any competitive edge.

"No man. Why would there be? He's my friend. I haven't got time for that, man. I don't compete with anyone as an actor. I just do what I do, I'm not concerned with what the rest of the world's doing."

Considine will next be seen in the BBC drama My Zinc Bed with Uma Thurman.

So what was she like to work with?

"She's grand. But people are just people, you know."