Beck Goldsmith

January 2015

SHE came pretty much out of nowhere. While the Nottingham music scene was awaiting the release of the debut albums by Saint Raymond, Indiana and Amber Run, suddenly there it was, Lustre & Curve by Beck Goldsmith.

Who the hell is Beck Goldsmith?

It seems she’s been around a while. A one-time member of Lorna, her presence on the city gig circuit was a while back, alongside Love Ends Disaster, Swimming and lo-ego.

She self-released two albums of melancholic folk then disappeared to Scotland, Wiltshire and London, moving back to North Notts recently after the breakdown of her marriage.

But you are unlikely to see her hopping aboard the city gig circuit anytime soon.

“I shy away from that acoustic, singer-songwriter corner of a bar type of gig, I’m not really into that,” says the 34-year-old, who was born in Mansfield. “I like being a bit louder with a full band. Although I’m not a band so I fall between the two. It’s why I’ve never really found a niche in Nottingham.”

That said, she will be playing The Maze next month, supporting Drew Holcomb for Cosmic American.

Lustre & Curve, released this week on Island largely owes its existence to Goldsmith’s version of I Vow To Thee My Country being used on a trailer for the BBC drama The Village, starring John Simm.

The song, a traditional one created in 1921 using a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice and the music of Gustav Holst, was chosen by Beck’s friend Jon Dix, one-time member of Nottingham-based alt-rock band Love Ends Disaster.

Now based in London and composing music for TV and film, Jon called on his old friend to deliver the vocals for his pitch to the company making the trailer in 2013.

“I was living in Scotland at the time,” says Beck.

“Although it was only used on the trailer, it was absolutely hammered on TV and the radio. It was from that I got my management and label interest.”

Dix produced the album, a collection of melancholic and yet uplifting songs partly inspired by Beck’s divorce.

“It’s not just about that. There were other things going on in my life at that time as well – positive things.

“The divorce wasn’t bleak and acrimonious and mud-slinging – it wasn’t a big horrible bust-up. It happened organically. We both agreed on it, although it was still hard to go through.”

She adds: “I didn’t want it to be a bleak, angry-woman-tortured-soul kind of album.

“Quite a few of the tracks start small and build. I like adding textures and giving crescendo and being able to sing out at the end.”

Lustre & Curve has earned strong reviews, with Mojo saying “She bends her stoic dark folk into filmic shapes 4/5” and The Sun offering “Her beautiful melodies are full of hope, 3/5”. The Guardian didn’t seem to like it but still gave it 3/5.

Sports presenter Claire Balding had her in session on her Radio 2 show after choosing I Vow To Thee My Country for Desert Island Discs.

Radio 2 has since played Point & Pier, a bonus track on the album that also borrows from a classical composer.”

“It’s a Tchaikovsky melody that I borrowed,” laughs Beck, who also has a publishing deal with BMG Chrysalis and is writing songs for other artists.

What most have been drawn to is her breathy, lilting – and a little Irish – voice.

“When I started out I was singing properly. If you listen to my first album, and I don’t recommend it, my voice is totally different.

“It was when I did some music for the Buzz music trivia video game with Jon where I had to impersonate a lot of different vocalists – I realised these people were singing properly. But they were obviously singing in a way that felt comfortable. So I stopped thinking about the way I sang and let my voice just happen. I started to enjoy the sounds I was making.

“The way my voice is now feels nice in my mouth.”


Beck Goldsmith supports Drew Holcomb at The Maze on Sunday, February 8 from 7.30pm. Tickets are £12.50 from gigantic.com. 

The Missing: Arsher Ali

 November 2014

IT was the quality of the writing that drew Arsher Ali to The Missing, BBC One’s prime time thriller about child abduction.

“I was sent the first few episodes and they were good, old-fashioned cliffhangers,” says the 30-year-old, who plays journalist Malik Suri.

“When I’d run out of episodes to read, I was genuinely annoyed,” adds Ali, who rose to prominence in the hit film comedy Four Lions.

“It was like only having the first hundred pages of a good book. The writing was superb. It’s obviously the first thing you look for, as an actor. You don’t have to expend energy trying to find the reason behind what you’re saying, it just is what they would say.”

The Missing follows Tony, played by James Nesbitt, as he searches for his missing child Oliver in Paris, and charts the impact the hunt has on his relationship with wife Emily, played by Mr Selfridge actress Frances O'Connor.

“Malik is an ambitious man,” says Ali.

“At the beginning of the story he is a fledgling journalist looking to make a name for himself, driven on by the memory of his father who was also a journalist. He manages to find a way into the case via some of his father’s past discoveries and as the case progresses he is faced with some ethical and moral questions whose outcomes shape him and haunt him in later life.”

Journalism was a trade he had considered before acting.

“Acting came along as a happy accident,” says Ali, whose TV credits include Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, mini-series The Guilty and Channel 4’s feature-length drama Complicit, for which he won an award at the 2013 Monte Carlo Television Festival.

“My interest was in sports journalism, a different field all together to Malik’s,” says the avid Forest fan who writes about the Reds for the Post.

After flunking media and English - “because I couldn’t be bothered” - he turned to acting with the encouragement of a drama teacher at Bilborough College.

Once he’d graduated from the East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, where he won the Laurence Olivier Student Award, Ali worked on the stage, with stints at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, before Four Lions came along in 2010.

“I’ve never experienced such a calm, unified and productive atmosphere on a set before,” he says of The Missing, which was filmed in Belgium with Rebus star Ken Stott also in the cast.

“The crew were super-chilled but extremely diligent. In the UK, I think most people like to work themselves into a tizzy.”

He adds: “The most memorable thing for me was the strong smell of herbal cigarettes. It’s a distinctive smell on film sets or on stage for ‘character smoking’. I’m not sure how many packs I got through as Malik, but it felt like an unhealthy amount.”

The Missing returns to BBC One on Tuesday, the fifth episode of eight.

“It’s a very compelling story and it’s been afforded the time to tell it properly. I can’t believe the BBC gave us eight epiosdes to tell the story. And I’m surprised that people have stuck with it because they usually want everything wrapped up in two or three.

“British TV can have a tendency to sometimes rush through stories but if we’ve learnt anything from American or Scandinavian drama, it’s that if the story is compelling enough then people will go with you no matter what.”

Ali, who grew up in Sherwood, now lives in the city centre with Emmerdale actress Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi. The pair are yet to start a family but the horror of child abduction wasn’t hard for him to imagine.

“It’s every parent or family’s greatest fear, isn’t it? Losing a child. It’s earth shattering.”

He has just finished filming with Martin Clunes and Art Malik for Arthur & George, an ITV drama about Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“It’s a true story about a guy, who I play, wrongly imprisoned and Arthur Conan Doyle comes to his defence to get him a pardon. I can’t believe it’s real. It’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence.”

Today he’s off to Belfast to shoot a film alongside This Is England star Stephen Graham. But his biggest role is coming soon, one will that will see him once again on prime time television. Although he’s sworn to secrecy.

“I can’t say but I’m slowly getting there,” he says of a career that will keep him busy for the foreseeable future; one which threatens to interrupt his love of watching Forest play.

“I’m nuts,” he admits.

“I’ll travel everywhere to watch them. And if I can’t make it I’ll ring home and get my mum or my missus to put the phone to the radio so I can listen to the commentary on Radio Nottingham.”

The Missing continues on BBC One on Tuesday at 9pm. 

Notts TV

June 2013

Nottingham will have its very own TV channel next year. Notts TV will deliver news, sport, entertainment, business, politics and plenty more to homes right across the county, seven days a week.

THE short clip of Prince Harry grinning into the camera and saying “ey up mi duck” has been seen by millions around the world.
The flame-haired royal also read a news report about local music star Jake Bugg as part of his recent visit to the city, before pulling a lever which triggered a short film about Notts TV.
This was the first glimpse of Nottingham’s very first TV channel, which will be launching in April 2014.
It will broadcast on Freeview Channel 8, seven days a week, initially from 4pm to midnight, to homes across the county, delivering a broad range of programmes.
These will include news, sport, entertainment, politics, business, weather, travel and more.
The consortium behind Notts TV includes the Nottingham Post, Nottingham Trent University, Confetti Media and Inclusive Digital.
“Everyone is welcome to get involved,” says Confetti Media chairman Craig Chettle, who is also chairman of the Notts TV consortium.
“They can come up with ideas for programmes, be part of presenting teams, be among the writers... there are a whole host of ways they can get involved.”
A core of about 15 staff will run the station with input from Post journalists, broadcast journalism students at Nottingham Trent University and students at Confetti Media, a hub for film, TV and music creativity in the city.
Says Craig: “We need to get the blend of experience and professionalism balanced with the student input. It’s something we’ve got 20 years of experience of doing and Trent can do that as well.
“It’s a great opportunity for people wanting to learn about all manner of things in the television industry.
“But we want to dispel the notion that it’s going to be student-run TV. That is definitely not the case.”
Local organisations, community groups and businesses will also contribute heavily to the schedule to ensure that Notts TV delivers content that is relevant to everyone across the county.
Garry Smith, commercial director at Nottingham Trent University says: “It’s not envisaged that we will produce all of the programmes ourselves. We will be commissioning local companies and people who have ideas that fit in with what we are trying to do.
“It could be a documentary, an animation... quite literally any kind of programme that you would now see on TV.”
Programme ideas are still being worked on now but so far they include a weekly arts programme called Notts On, a weekly sports round up called Notts Sports, plus regular documentaries on local issues, monthly programmes on local politics, business, community activities, outdoor interests, science and history, and a monthly debate programme called Notts Debate.
There are plans to cover local concerts and other arts events.
Says Craig: “We’ve had ideas for quiz shows, game shows, dramas... we’re hoping to get as many ideas as we possibly can.”
“We’re not going to be making Downton Abbey; people in Nottingham are already getting programmes like that,” says Nigel Dacre, director of Inclusive Digital, the London-based company that will be delivering a lot of the news content  for Notts TV.
“What they don’t get at the moment are TV programmes about local news, sport, business, shopping, arts, property and the like. And that’s what we’ll be delivering.”
Nigel is a former editor at ITV News, in charge of News at Ten and the 24-hour ITN News Channel. He also oversaw ITV’s coverage of two General Elections and Princess Diana’s funeral.
“News is regarded as a really important part of the service for all local TV channels because it’s what is missing in every city,” says Nigel.
“You have very good television news at a national and regional level but you don’t have local TV news.”
Garry agrees: “From the government’s point of view, the news is key. Research from around the world shows that the reason people watch local TV is for local news. And it’s one of the main things we are bringing to the table, with our centre for broadcast journalism.
“We have nearly 200 broadcast journalism students and a professional TV studio in the city centre. All the equipment is industry standard.”
Notts TV News will be journalism-led and have a broad agenda. It will be produced by a team of video journalists and broadcast from the studio at Nottingham Trent University, with headlines and interviews from the Post newsroom.
The channel, one of up to 30 to launch next year around the UK, will have £150,000 of government funding in its first year but the long-term aim is to generate income from advertising, sponsorship and possibly teleshopping.
Says Nigel: “It’s impossible for a lot of businesses to advertise on television because it’s so expensive. Notts TV will give them an affordable opportunity to do that.”

Says Craig: “Confetti’s role will be the non-news side; culture, music, light entertainment and drama. That’s what we’re most well placed to do, whereas Nottingham Post, Inclusive Media and Nottingham Trent University, with their centre for broadcasting and journalism, are all really well placed to run the news side of things, and other spin-offs like sport.
“We’ve been working with DHP’s George Akins and BBC Radio Nottingham’s Dean Jackson about how we can have a Nottingham music show. It would be remiss not to have something like that at the heart of the channel.”
He adds: “There is often the perception that local means low quality but those two things don’t have to go hand in hand. I know people are imaging the worst; wonky sets and rubbish acting, but it’s a commercial channel. If it’s rubbish then people won’t watch it and if people don’t watch it then businesses won’t advertise.
“Our aim is to produce shows of such a high quality that they can be shown on national television.”
Prince Harry’s visit to confetti was to launch the Notts TV Institute, where local creative talent will be trained to work on Notts TV and it helped boost the profile of Notts TV around the world.
“He was a really good sport and within a few hours that clip of him reading the news was all over the internet. It was shown on TV in America, Australia... it’s amazing how quick these things can evolve.
“Everyone was so enthused by his attendance and support for what we are doing.”

To find out more about Notts TV and how you can get involved got to nottstv.com.

Billy Ivory's BBC drama Truckers begins filming in Nottingham

May 2013

TRUCKERS is a comedy drama set in Nottingham about a small family firm with just six drivers. Stephen Tompkinson plays the lead character.
It’s five one-hour episodes that’ll be broadcast on BBC 1 at 9pm, hopefully in the autumn.
We’ll be filming through to July and we’re all over Nottingham; Cossall, Stoney Street, Stonebridge Farm in St Ann’s, Wollaton Park, Eastwood... it’s all over the place.
A lot of it will be on the inner ring road because that’s what you’re dealing with when you’re trucking.
And I’m hoping the finale will be on Slab Square as long as we get permission.
I wanted to film it at the edge of Sneinton near the Racecourse, where you are in the city but just a step away from all these fields. But we couldn’t find a yard down there that worked.
I’m an executive producer on it. It’s the sensible way to do it because you write the thing, you’ve created it and you know how it should be.
Steve’s fantastic in it. I wrote for him years ago when I did Minder, when I was first starting out. He has such an edge to him. We had the read-through last week and he was astonishing.
And he does a fantastic Nottingham accent. He rang me up and said ‘can you read my lines back to me?’ and I said ‘I can’t because my accent is all over the shop’. But I read a few of his lines and sent them back to him and he used that. He has a voice coach as well but he’s really great at it. And it’s not easy to do.
I remember Tim Healy in Common As Muck. He was going to try to do a Nottingham accent and in the end he just gave up.
Truckers is like all my stuff; it’s bittersweet. It’s funny but it’s got an edge to it.
I think it’s very different to Common As Muck and I didn’t want to repeat myself anyway. It’s similar in that it’s a work-based drama. It is a revisiting of that environment but it has very different concerns.

Common As Muck was about spiritual dirt versus actual dirt. This is about isolation. Today we are so well connected with each other through social networking but at the same time we are more isolated. You see that at gigs where everyone is together but they’ve all got their phones out.
I thought truckers were a brilliant metaphor for that. They belong to the same company but they go out on their own.
Each episode is like a little self-contained film about each of the characters and how they deal with the isolation.
Steve plays Malachi. There’s his son Glenn, a female trucker called Wendy, Michelle, who is the transport manager and Martin Banks, who owns the company Banks Transport.
Not one character is based on me. I suppose there are always bits of me in whatever I write.
But I’ve never driven a lorry.
I went out with a mate of mine, who is a trucker, when I was researching it. He delivers cement, concrete, grain and turf. And I got to know the joys of ‘trucker’s Tizer’, which is the bottles of amber liquid you often find in lay-bys.
I found it to be a very isolated job but they’d meet up at a particular truck stop or pub.
It’s been two years in the making for me and I still like spending time with the characters. I hope the audience feel the same, as they did about the characters in Common As Muck and Made In Dagenham.
We have a base in the city centre but I haven’t been there yet because I’m at home rewriting scenes for the final episode. It’s because one of the actors is getting married and can’t do certain scenes so I’m having to write him out of them.
It’s a bit of a nightmare but I’m getting there.
The cast and crew are loving Nottingham. The producer sent me a text the other day and said ‘I can see why you love Nottingham; it’s a beautiful city.’
And I said ‘I know and I look forward to seeing some of it when I’ve finished rewriting this bloody script!’

Natalie Duncan

July 2012

IT isn’t so much a case of when Nottingham’s army of rising music stars will hit the charts, but who will be first. Dog Is Dead have been gathering pace with every single they release for Atlantic and much is expected of their debut album in October.

This week Jake Bugg’s latest EP, Taste It, shot in to the iTunes Top Five, which was coupled with the news that he’ll be touring the US with Noel Gallagher.

Meanwhile, 80s dance pop revivalist Ronika continues to pop up in the national press for her own music and collaborations with the likes of Herve and Mylo.

And then there’s Natalie Duncan.

This week her debut album for Decca, Devil In Me, was released.

And the reaction to it has been overwhelming.

“Just might steal the crown of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black as the soundtrack to heartbreak” (Express); “One of the greatest debut albums of the year” (Sunday Times); “An extraordinarily expressive voice” (Q magazine).

Not bad considering Devil In Me is a “soft release” – put out by the label with little publicity to see how it is received.

“I’ve been nervous about it,” admits Natalie, who grew up in West Bridgford and The Meadows.

“But yes I’ve had some good reviews. The single won’t be out until September so it won’t be until then that my songs will be on the radio. And I’m supposed to be playing on Jools Holland’s show around then as well.

“I haven’t had it confirmed yet. It would be ridiculous if that happened.”

That’s also when Natalie will likely tour the UK proper but she has been performing regularly of late, including shows at the Bodega and Nottingham Contemporary.

“To be honest I didn’t think that my voice was very good,” she says of the latter, which was a showcase of Notts talent featuring Liam Bailey, Nina Smith and others.

“I was screaming at Nina Smith and Chris McDonald when they were playing and forgot that I was actually going to be singing after them,” laughs the 23-year-old.

“Everyone else said it was really good and the crowd where really nice. I listened to it afterwards and it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

She moved to London two years ago, after an appearance on the BBC 2 programme Goldie’s Band: By Royal Appointment. The drum’n’bass star scoured the UK for young talent to perform at Buckingham Palace in front of Prince Harry.

“I knew already that I was really camera-shy so I was nervous about that but the actual experience was amazing.

“We became almost like a family overnight and for that reason it’s the best thing I have ever done.”

As well as landing a record deal after the show, she also featured onGoldie’s single, Freedom.

“Goldie is just a big ball of energy, like a bouncing ball. He is really in your face. Sometimes I found that he was quite crazy but he has a heart of gold. No pun intended at all there. But he’s a little bit like a massive child.”

It was her record label who encourage her to move to London.

“And at my job in Nottingham they were saying ‘you can’t keep taking time off for your music’! So I had to choose.”

That was Road To Recovery, a Nottingham-based charity.

“They help people with psychosis become part of society again. I’d teach them music.”

So she made the move but Natalie is no fan of the capital.

“London is too fast. I’m too lazy to live in London.”

She adds: “I won’t always live here. I don’t know if I will move back to Nottingham, though.”

Natalie was actually born in Croydon, moving with her family aged three to West Bridgford. They lived on Ella Road and she went to Lady Bay School but when her parents split up she moved to The Meadows with her mum.

It’s then that something happened which was to have a long-lasting effect on her. Something that would lead to depression and cast a shadow over her music.

“There was one particular incident but I wouldn’t want to talk about it. I don’t mind talking about the fact that I have been quite depressed and that a lot of my music stems from that.

“The songs on the album are revealing but I don’t think they’re that autobiographical. There are clues to good and bad things that have happened to me. You have to read the lyrics and work it out.”

Music had already become a big part of her life by the age of five when she began to teach herself to play the piano.

“But my technical ability doesn’t really reflect that amount of years,” she admits.

“I’ve never had lessons and I probably don’t practise as much as I should.”

After school she studied music at Clarendon (NCN) college then immersed herself on the Nottingham music scene.

“That really gave me the confidence to go out and do my own songs.

“Once you get a taste for performing you just don’t want to stop.”

The album was produced by Grammy winner Joe Henry and recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios near Bath.

“The setting was idyllic; I had my own cottage. Although there was a swan on the lake and I don’t like swans. I didn’t really know this until I recorded there.”

When she returns to Nottingham she sees her mum, while her dad is a regular at her gigs.

“He is a massive music fan,” she says.

“We have a relationship based on him coming to my gigs. It’s always been like that.”

Is there a boyfriend?

“I’ve been single for two years now, which sucks.”

Perhaps it’s because she is too busy becoming a music star. There just isn’t the time...

She laughs: “I would make time.”

Brendan O'Carroll (Mrs Brown)

May 2011

Brian Clough was the Mrs Brown of football

THAT his mother died when he was just 28 did Brendan O’Carroll a favour, he says. It’s a surprisingly dark moment in an otherwise bright chat with the comedy star, who is taking a break at his holiday home in Florida when we catch up.

“I never failed when she was alive,” says the 55-year-old Dubliner, the youngest of 11 children.

“And to learn you need to fail. Between the age of 28 and 35 everything I touched turned to cr*p. I failed a lot and I learned a lot. So, as much as I loved her and I adored the ground she walked on, probably the best thing she ever did for me was to die.”

He believes she would have enjoyed his success.

“I was a waiter when she died. She would have absolutely loved this.”

It was more than 20 years ago that his comedy career turned around, when Irish radio station RTE commissioned him to write a series of short stories based on his character, Agnes Brown, the loud-mouthed widow, whose favourite pastime is meddling in the lives of her six children.

The series ran for three years. O’Carroll followed that with a series of bestselling Mrs Brown books, sell-out stage tours, nine DVDs and even a movie, starring Angelica Huston, called Agnes Brown.

But he’s only really become a household name in Britain in the past few months with the BBC TV series Mrs Brown’s Boys.

It’s riddled with expletives, so did he have trouble getting them past BBC censors.

“I expected them to say there’d be none but they took the opposite view,” he says. “Bizarrely, the first script meeting I had with them, they said ‘We want you to do the show exactly as you would on stage, then all we have to think about is what time we put it on at’.”

He adds: “I don’t know if you noticed but as the series went on I cut them down. That first episode had 34 effs in it and I thought that’s too many. So if there was any editing it was done by me, not them.”

Mrs Brown was a success for O’Carroll, whose wife Jenny plays Cathy in the series, long before he reached British TV, to the extent that he’s able to work for only six months of the year.

“The BBC get six weeks of my time and that leaves me 20 weeks to tour, which I spend across the United States, Ireland and the UK. And then I take off on holiday for 26 weeks.”

“Way back, when I’d only been doing stand-up for a year or so, I got a call from a guy who wanted me to do a date. I’d already booked a caravan holiday, so I said ‘Sorry, I can’t’. He said ‘OK, I’ll give you £500’. I said ‘No, I’m actually not working that weekend.’ He rang me back later: ‘£750 and that’s me last offer.’ I said ‘look, I’m not working’ and he said ‘You’ve some cheek.... £1,500 and that’s it.’”

He laughs: “I said ‘What date did you want me to do? I’ll be there!’. I learnt a lesson. The scarcer you are, the more valuable you are.”

As well as his home in Dublin, he has another in Orlando where he spends a lot of the winter. It’s where he’s been holed up ahead of next month’s UK tour of Good Mourning Mrs Brown.

“It’s 84 degrees and glorious. It’s only now that I realise what people mean by seasonally affected disorder. The feeling of getting up in the morning to a blue sky is amazing. It really does cheers you up.”

He adds: “The BBC are under the impression that I’m actually writing the next series for them but I haven’t a clue what to write. We start recording in September. And there’s a possibility of us doing a Christmas special.”

Before that he’ll shoot new ITV sitcom The Security Men, written by Caroline Aherne.

“It’s set in a shopping centre and I’m working opposite Bobby Ball, which I’ve wanted to do for years. I’m looking forward to that because it’s not my script. I just do my piece then go.”

O’Carroll spent his teenage years doing odd jobs as a waiter, milkman, pirate radio DJ and painter and decorator, even running his own bar and cabaret lounge.

“I still have to pinch myself,” he admits.

He’ll be bringing his show to Nottingham for the first time, with six dates from June 28.

“I have never set foot in Nottingham in my life and I am so looking forward to it because I was a Nottingham Forest fan during the Cloughie years and I loved that man. I thought he was so brash.

“He was the Mrs Brown of football. He said what he liked and he was prepared to accept the consequences.”

Good Mourning Mrs Brown at the Royal Concert Hall, June 28-July 3. Tickets £19.50-£27.50, 0115 989 5555, www.gigsandtours.com

Mathew Horne: Worried About The Boy

May 2010

GAVIN and Stacey star Mathew Horne will be seen kissing a 17-year-old man on BBC this weekend.

But he’s not worried what his mum, back in Burton Joyce, will think.

“I’ve done it before so I don’t think she’ll mind too much,” said the 31-year-old, who appears in the Boy George drama Worried About The Boy.

“It was with James (Corden, his Gavin and Stacey co-star) and in the very early days that I did on-screen boy-on-boy action.”

Mathew plays Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, who had a tempestuous relationship with the androgynous singer, played by newcomer Douglas Booth.

The 90-minute drama charts the beginnings of the band on London’s New Romantic scene up to their first hit in 1982, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? The song was written by George about Moss.

“When we recreated the Top Of The Pops performance of that song Jon was on set, which was very strange. Especially as I’m wearing the same shirt he wore.

“I asked him for any clothes he had and he happened to come up with the shirt. So there I am as him, in his clothes, 28 years on.”

Moss was concerned about how he would be portrayed in the drama, which also stars The League Of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss as Malcolm McLaren.

“I think he was happy that I was playing him but he wanted to know about the script and how he was going to be portrayed. I told him he was being portrayed in a really nice way.”

The Moss/George relationship remained secret outside the band until the singer published his tell-all autobiography, Take It Like A Man, in 1995. By this time Moss was married with three children.

Moss was the driving force in the band but there was little actual footage of him for Matthew to capture his personality.

“I can play the drums a bit and that was enough to get by. But on the internet there’s an interview with him and a press conference but little else. It became clear that I need to look like Jon, which I think I do, but to make it a 100 per cent accurate impersonation would be a mistake.

“We all had to find the right balance between making it faithful but also dramatic.

“It’s got to work as a film for somebody who doesn’t know Jon Moss or Culture Club and who wasn’t around in the eighties.”

He was too young to draw on any personal memories.

“I don’t remember anything of them. But I really wanted to do it because the script was so good and to do with music which I’m very interested in.”

Though he never wanted to be a musician himself.

“It would take away my love of music,” said the regular gig-goer.

The drama was filmed in Manchester earlier this year. He currently has a number of projects on the go.

“I’ll be doing something on the radio, I might be writing something in book form, I’m writing a couple of comedy shows, I’m attached to some films and there’s a play I want to do. I like to do one-off unique projects.”

He then admitted: “I’ve been taking it a bit easy. You’ve got to look after yourself.”

Last year he collapsed on stage due to exhaustion during a performance of Entertaining Mr Sloane at London’s Trafalgar Studios theatre.

At the time he was also promoting his BBC3 series with James Corden, Horne & Corden, their big screen debut Lesbian Vampire Killers and travelling around the country DJ-ing.

“I enjoy the DJ-ing but it’s such late nights and I was doing it four nights a week. I went through a period of really disliking it. But I’ve just started enjoying it again.”

He runs a monthly club night in Shoreditch, near to his home.

“I’ve never had one big ambition,” he said.

“I’m fortunate to have been given some amazing opportunities and at the moment that is still the case, so I’m really happy.”

Worried About the Boy is on BBC2 on Sunday at 9pm