Arsher Ali

March 2015

THE mystery surrounding Doctor Who is legendary. Cast and crew are sworn to secrecy in order to ensure storylines for future series are never leaked.
“It’s the first thing you sign; even before you sign your contract,” says Arsher Ali, of the confidentiality agreement with the makers of Britain’s long-running sci-fi series.
The Nottingham-born actor has already filmed his two episodes for the next series which is likely to hit the small screen in late summer.
“I can say it’s a two-parter and my general view of Doctor Who but no more than that,” says the 30-year-old, whose acting breakthrough came five years ago in the comedy film Four Lions.
He has since appeared in Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, The Guilty, Complicit, The Missing and, most recently, Arthur & George opposite Martin Clunes.
About Doctor Who, he says: “I am a fan of the show although it was a shame that the first Doctor for me when I was growing up was Sylvester McCoy.
“You could see that the show was dying so I didn’t really appreciate it until they brought it back with Christopher Eccleston,” says Arsher, who lives in the city centre with Emmerdale actress Roxy Shahidi. “He is up there on my favourite actors’ list so I started watching it again.
“I don’t like the sillier elements of Doctor Who; when it’s really camp and everyone is running around. That’s why I like Peter Capaldi,” he says of the current Doctor.
“The show should be dark and mysterious, and shouldn’t pull any punches in terms of being scary. When we were kids it’s what we all wanted.”
He adds: “Peter Davison was an underrated Doctor; he had a kind of vulnerability. And Tom Baker was silly but he could be serious as well. He was just mad, like The Joker.”
Doctor Who is just the latest in a string of TV series and films that Arsher has been busy filming over recent months.

At the end of last year he was in hit BBC drama The Missing opposite James Nesbitt, then in March in Arthur & George, a three-part ITV drama adapted from Julian Barnes’ acclaimed novel about the true story of The Great Wyrley Outrages.
In 1906, George Edalji, a young Anglo-Indian solicitor, was imprisoned for mutilating animals and writing obscene letters. He served three years before being released, after which he set out to clear his name in order for him to return to practising law.
Helping him in his quest was Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“I can’t believe it’s real; it’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence,” says Arsher, who played Edalji opposite Clunes as Conan Doyle.
“You think you know him from Men Behaving Badly, that he’s a kind of oafish, comical guy but he’s not at all,” he says of his co-star.
“He’s super smart, super sophisticated, very witty and super posh. And he was so good in it.”
The three-parter pulled in up to six million viewers.
“The actual case, and the achieving of the pardon was quite an historic event. A lot of laws and regulations were changed from that first case. So it is an important landmark case in terms of law now.
“I’d read the book when I left drama school. Then the Nottingham Playhouse did a co-production of it and that landed at my door. But I thought ‘no’ because they don’t do catering,” he jokes.
The theatre’s artistic director, Giles Croft, is a neighbour and has often asked Arsher to appear in various productions there but he’s always been too busy.
“I’d love to work at the Playhouse; it’s where I saw my first theatre really.”
That was when he was at Bilborough College.
“It would be great to work with Giles. My missus has. She did The Importance of Being Earnest with Anjli Mohindra,” he adds, of the Nottingham actress who played his wife in The Missing.
After Bilborough College, Arsher went to East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, then graduated to roles with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
There will be two more films featuring Arsher out this year; one with This Is England actor Stephen Graham with the working title A Patch of Fog.

“It’s about stalkers and Stephen’s really good in it; very creepy. And he has a menacing persona which he plays on, just for a laugh. Some of the cast members who’d not met him before didn’t know how to take him.
“It was fun. I don’t do a lot of film because I get offered a lot of good TV stuff.”
He had complained that due to his looks, he’d been repeatedly offered roles as a terrorist.
“If you see anything that has a kind of terrorist plot at its heart, be sure it landed at my door,” he laughs.
“It’s getting better though.”
Arsher, who’ll be in another film due out this year called Remainder, based on the cult novel by Tom McCarthy, is writing a screenplay about heavy metal music in Iraq.
“I’m very excited about that, because it’s mad,” he says.
“It’s from an article I came across and I optioned it. We’re on the third draft of the script now.”
He adds: “I’ve always fancied writing. I read so many scripts, why wait around for that perfect thing to land at your door? Why not do it yourself?”
When he’s not working, Arsher’s free time is dominated by sport. His first choice of career was sports journalism and he’s sort of achieved that with regular columns in the Nottingham Post about his beloved Nottingham Forest.
“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.”
He played football for his school team but was “too lazy” to make a go of it.
Arsher, the son of a Raleigh welder, now retired, is also often to be seen at Trent Bridge during the cricket season.
“You can just walk around there and everyone is so friendly. You can get friendly with the players; they are always more wordly than footballers, so you have a proper conversation with them.”
He adds: “I started a cricket team when I was at Haywood School in Sherwood.

“We only had two other teams to play against and I think we always lost those games.”
He and Shahidi will soon be moving North to be closer to Yorkshire Television, where Emmerdale is filmed.
He says with a grin: “If it was up to me we’d be in West Bridgford, but with the City Ground and Trent Bridge just down the road, she knows I’d never be home.”

Joe Dempsie

March 2015

HAD his family not moved to Nottingham when he was four months old, Joe Dempsie wouldn’t have been an actor.

“There’s no doubt about that,” says the 27-year-old, best known for his roles in teen drama Skins and epic HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.

He was born in Liverpool but due to his parents’ work, grew up in West Bridgford.

By the age of 13, on his mother’s suggestion, he was a member of The Television Workshop, the Nottingham acting school that has produced numerous stars of TV, film and stage.

Although Dempsie wasn’t harbouring dreams of becoming an actor.

“I went because it was a laugh” he admits, talking to Confetti students as part of their ninth annual Industry Week, a series of events over five days and nights designed to inspire students of film, TV, music and games.

“It wasn’t something I’d considered before joining the Workshop. It wasn’t something I considered the first few years of being a member of the Workshop either.

“I just enjoyed messing around there twice a week. Every now again you’d go for an audition for a part in a TV show or a film but that was just a bonus.

“It was only when I’d been told by the guys who ran the Workshop that it was maybe something I could do, that I started to take it seriously.”

After finishing A-levels at West Bridgford School, where he admits to being “a frustrating student to teach”, Dempsie took a year off to “mull over” the idea of becoming an actor.

“I got a job at Cineworld in the Cornerhouse, thinking I’d be watching loads of films but at the end of a ten-hour shift the last thing you wanted to do was to spend another two hours there.

“By the end of that gap year not a lot was really happening auditions-wise so I applied to do history at university in Birmingham.”

But then he got the part in Skins, the E4 series about partying teenagers in which he played loveable hedonist Chris Miles.

“Skins was nuts,” says Dempsie, who was a regular at Media and Stealth nightclubs as a teenager.

“We shot series one and had no idea what would happen. It was a low-budget show for E4. But then the ad campaign for it started. The trailer seemed to be on every ad break on Channel 4, there were posters on buses, on the Tube... so the build-up for it was huge.

“When people talk about things changing overnight, that’s what happened for us. The night after it was shown, life was different. It was a bit like being in One Direction, I imagine.”

Dempsie, who recalls his first acting role as the ox in a school nativity play (“crouched with a Cornflakes box on my head”), was in the series for two years before being killed off.

“I think the success of it was that out of this motley crew of friends there was one that everyone could identify with.”

As a result of Skins he was being recognised in the street wherever he went.

“Skins started informing some of my career decisions; I didn’t really know if that level of attention was for me.”

He turned down a lot of Skins-style parts offered to him and took on small roles in Doctor Who, Merlin, Shane Meadows’ This Is England ‘86 and The Damned United, before his next major success came along: big budget US fantasy series Game of Thrones.

“I felt like I’d reclaimed my anonymity but then I had to readjust again when Game of Thrones came along,” he says.

“But it doesn’t affect my day to day in the same way that Skins did.”

Since 2011, he’s been playing Gendry in the internationally successful series based on the novels of George R R Martin.

A movie has been rumoured but he doesn’t know if it will happen.

“I think it’s a really good idea but I think the proposal is to do a couple more seasons and then a series of three films, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I hope it does happen, as long as I’m in it,” he laughs.

Other TV hits he’s appeared in include The Fades, Moving On, Accused, Southcliffe, New Worlds and Murder: Joint Enterprise, a one-off drama set in Nottingham that won a BAFTA.

“I don’t get back to Nottingham as much as I’d like,” says Dempsie, who lives in South London.

“My parents are still based here but they’ve been in Surrey for the past five months helping my younger sister, who has cerebral palsy, settle into her new house.

“We’ve got to get a care team in place, which is quite a long process.”

He adds: “When I do get back here it’ll be to see Forest or catch up with friends, although most of them are either engaged or have babies, so no-one wants to go into town anymore.”

Dempsie, who is single, stays in touch with numerous Workshoppers, including Mr Selfridge actress Aisling Loftus and recent BAFTA winner Jack O’Connell, plus Perry Fitzpatrick, his co-star in This Is England 90.

“It’s the most fun I’ve had on a set in a long, long time,” he says of the four-part drama, due to air on Channel 4 in the autumn. “Half the cast I grew up with at the Workshop,” he adds; among them were Vicky McClure, Andrew Shim, Rosamund Hanson, Michael Socha and Chanel Cresswell.

“For everyone it’s a safe environment.”

The BAFTA-winning series recently completed filming in Sheffield, with Nottingham-based director Shane Meadows, who he describes as “the master puppeteer.”

He adds: “We were reminiscing about the Workshop days.

“We’re in the golden age of Workshoppers being professional actors. When I joined it was only Samantha Morton and Chris Gascoyne, who was in Coronation Street, that we looked up to.

“Now we’re everywhere.”

Andrea Lowe - DCI Banks

February 2015

THERE is a scene in the new series of Yorkshire-based crime drama DCI Banks where a murder investigation leads to Nottingham.

“Yes and no,” laughs actress Andrea Lowe, who plays DS Annie Cabbot.

“The story does travel to Nottingham but sadly we didn’t for the filming, which was a shame,” says the actress who grew up in Arnold.

“So we pretended to be in Nottingham to visit a relative of a victim but it was all filmed in Leeds. Although, I was back in Nottingham last week for a friend’s 40th birthday party,” adds Lowe, who now lives in London.

“And I brought my son up to hang out with my mum and dad in Woodthorpe.”

Lowe had her first child, now two, during the second series, which is why Annie Cabbot was written out as being on maternity leave.

Lowe was back for the third series last year and able to see her newborn during filming as she and partner Terry Betts, a fashion buyer, relocated to Leeds for the duration.

“But he was back at work when we did this series at the end of last year,” she says.

“I did travel to London every week to see him but it was like a pit stop every time. Filming hours are always long so I wasn’t back home for long before I had to be back on the train up to Leeds.”

The fourth series, which starts on ITV1 next week, reunites Lowe with Stephen Tompkinson as Alan Banks, whose on/off relationship with Annie sees her reuniting with an old flame.

“The relationship is most definitely off,” insists Lowe, despite the trailer for the series showing the characters holding hands.

“That’s a reassuring gesture. Banks has a really traumatic time in the first episode and Annie is there for him but she’s very much back with the father of her daughter.

“Alan finds it hard to let go of their relationship. He wants her back. Annie still has feelings for him but a year has passed and in that time her feelings have almost diminished. She’s getting on with her own life.”

In the first of the three, two-part dramas, Banks suffers a family tragedy, although it doesn’t get in the way of the job in hand, investigating the discovery of a body. In fact, all three stories are about the discovery of bodies.

Does she call Tompkinson, who starred in the Nottingham-set BBC drama Truckers, Honky Tonk on set?

“Or Steve-O,” she laughs.

“He gets referred to as Mr T. He’s lovely. He’s not someone who finds problems, he finds solutions, which is helpful. Yeah, he’s a good guy.”

The first three series were based on the novels of Peter Robinson but this time new writers were brought in with CVs that include Law & Order: UK, Lewis, Midsomer Murders and Death In Paradise.

“We’re taking guidance from Peter Robinson so it’s not too much of a departure,” says Lowe, 39.

“There are still lots of options of who could have done it.”

She’d be able to work it out, having told ITV researchers for the programme’s publicity material ‘I would make a good police detective... I have a really investigative mind. I like to know where people are and what they are doing so I can get my head around things.’

It comes as a surprise to the actress that she actually said that. And that ‘there was a dalliance on set and I was straight onto it.’

A dalliance?

“I didn’t think ITV would put that in the notes,” says Lowe, sounding genuinely horrified.

“But yes I did some marvellous detective work when one of the actors had a fling with someone on set.”

Who?

“I can’t say!” she laughs.

Filming the series during the winter caused a few problems.

“It was really windy a lot of the time and so I’ve had to record some of the dialogue again to be overdubbed. Not that you’ll be able to tell.”

She adds: “There was a once scene where we chasing a car and the director and Stephen forgot to tell me that there would be another car involved. So I see this other car hurtling towards us and think it’s really happening,” she laughs.

Lowe’s love of acting goes right back to her childhood in Arnold, where she grew up alongside two brothers.

At Redhill Comprehensive School she appeared in a production of Under Milk Wood and in her spare time attended Lesley Reason School of Dance in Gedling.

After studying English and theatre at Goldsmiths College in London, she cut her teeth doing small parts on telly, such as Peak Practice and The Bill.

Since then her TV credits have included Monroe, Accused, The Tudors, Shameless and Where The Heart Is.

Her first film role was alongside her friend and neighbour Samantha Morton in the musical comedy drama The Token King set in a high school in Nottingham.

“I really want to do some more work in Nottingham,” she says.

“I wanted to do Truckers with Stephen but it didn’t make sense to have us together in another drama.”


DCI Banks begins on ITV1 on Wednesday at 9pm.

Arsher Ali - Arthur & George

February 2015

ITV expects its new drama, Arthur & George, to be a hit with viewers, as it sits in ‘the Broadchurch slot’.

The three-parter, which begins on Monday at 9pm, is based on a true story that became known as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

In 1906, George Edalji, a young Anglo-Indian solicitor, was imprisoned for mutilating animals and writing obscene letters.

He served three years before being released, after which he set out to clear his name in order for him to return to practising law.

Helping him in his quest was Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“I can’t believe it’s real; it’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence,” says Arsher Ali, who plays Edalji opposite Martin Clunes as Conan Doyle.

“The actual case, and the achieving of the pardon was quite an historic event,” continues the 30-year-old actor, last seen in BBC drama The Missing alongside James Nesbitt.

“A lot of laws and regulations were changed from that first case. So it is an important landmark case in terms of law now.”

Arthur & George is based on Julian Barnes’ acclaimed novel.

“I’d read that when I left drama school. Then the Nottingham Playhouse did a co-production of it and that landed at my door,” he says, meaning he was offered a part.

“But I thought ‘no’ because they don’t do catering,” he jokes.

The theatre’s artistic director, Giles Croft, is a neighbour and has often asked Ali if he’d like to appear in various productions there but he’s always been too busy.

“I’d love to work at the Playhouse; it’s where I saw my first theatre really.” That was when he was at Bilborough College.

“It would be great to work with Giles. My missus has,” he says of Emmerdale actress Roxy Shahidi, who he lives with in the city centre.

“She did The Importance of Being Earnest with Anjli Mohindra,” he adds, of the Nottingham actress who played his wife in The Missing.

After college, Ali went to East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, then graduated to roles with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Comedy film Four Lions, his breakthrough, was five years ago. Since then he’s been a fixture on the small screen, appearing in Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, The Guilty and Complicit.

There will be two more films featuring Ali out this year; one with This Is England actor Stephen Graham and another called Remainder, based on the cult novel by Tom McCarthy.

He’s also writing a screenplay about heavy metal music in Iraq.

Ali is sworn to secrecy about his role in the next series of Doctor Who, which he finished filming in January.

Arthur & George is his first work playing a real person.

Filmed at the end of last year in London, Oxford and the Black Country Museum in Birmingham, it also stars Art Malik (The Jewel in the Crown, True Lies) as Edalji’s father, Emma Fielding (Silk, DCI Banks, Kidnap and Ransom) as his mother and Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey) as Alfred ‘Woodie’ Wood, Sir Arthur’s trusted secretary, who helps him pursue the apparent miscarriage of justice.

“It is an amazing story which emerged from a letter George wrote campaigning to get people on side,” says Ali.

“Sir Arthur is immediately taken by the letter, and is convinced beyond a doubt that George is innocent.”

Of Clunes, Ali says: “You think you know him from Men Behaving Badly, that he’s a kind of oafish, comical guy but he’s not at all. He’s super smart, super sophisticated, very witty and super posh.”

Ali is an avid Forest fan, who writes regularly for the Post and gets to all the games that his schedule allows.

He’s also often to be seen at Trent Bridge during the cricket season.

“I started a cricket team when I was at Haywood School in Sherwood. Although we only had two other teams to play against and I think we always lost those games.”

He and Shahidi will soon be moving North to be closer to Yorkshire Television, where Emmerdale is filmed.

He says with a grin: “If it was up to met we’d be in West Bridgford but with the City Ground and Trent Bridge just down the road, she knows I’d never be home.”

Arthur & George begins on ITV1 on Monday at 9pm.

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. 

John Bishop (the autobiography)

October 2013

NOTTINGHAM is known for many things but for comedian John Bishop it conjures up one particular memory.
“It’s the only arena gig I’ve had to pause because there was a fight in the audience,” he laughs.
This was at the end of last year when he played four nights at the Capital FM Arena on his Rollercoaster tour.
“I stopped the show, we got all the lights up in the arena and just watched while I did a commentary from the stage.
“It was brilliant,” he adds, continuing to chuckle.
“The security dealt with it, everybody cheered and we carried on with the gig. Afterwards they told me after it was two families who’d had a rumble in the street or something, found themselves sat next to each other and a few words are exchanged. You know what it will have been about; the girls will have had too much wine, one of them will have started arguing with the other...”
The incident doesn’t make it in to Bishop’s autobiography, How Did All This Happen?, which follows his journey from council estates in and around Liverpool and Cheshire to becoming one of Britain’s best known comedians.
Along the way he has a spell as a semi-professional footballer, travels across the US in a sports car, rides home from Australia on a bicycle and carves out a relatively successful career in medical sales.
It was the breakdown of his marriage led prompted him to pack that in and try out stand-up comedy.
He and his wife Melanie didn’t stay apart for long and the couple have now been together for 20 years, living at home in Cheshire with their three teenage sons.
“I spoke to a few people who had written books and they’d spoke to family members and friends to get stories or looked through photo albums... I didn’t do any of that,” says the 46-year-old, who was born in Liverpool, one of three children to Ernie and Kathy Bishop.
“If I didn’t remember it, it didn’t happen to me,” he continues.
“The only story in the book that came out of a conversation with someone else is when I was in the Comedy Store and a fella tried to commit suicide and ended up in the audience. That came out of a conversation I had with another comic who was there. I’d forgot all about it.”
To write the bulk of it he decamped to Spain and rented a villa on his own. Once he’d finished the first draft, Bishop sent copies around the family.
“I said ‘is there anything in that I’ve got wrong or you object to?. I did all that and it was OK. I finished the second draft, gave it to the wife to read, then it goes to print, they publish it, I send me dad a copy and he’s says ‘I’m 72, not 74!’.
“I couldn’t believe it.”
He adds: “Me dad’s dead funny and dead straight; you know where you are with me dad. My mum and dad both read the book and my mum phoned up saying how wonderful it was, that she’d laughed and cried... then she put me dad on. I asked him if he’d read it and he said ‘Yeah, it was good that, yeah.”
The reaction of his three teenage songs was similarly downbeat.
“One morning over breakfast they said they’d  all finished it and I asked them ‘what did you think?’ They said: ‘Yeah, it was all right’”, which makes him howl with laughter.
“That was probably glowing praise from them. And it was the longest conversation I’d had with them in six months.”
Details of his marriage breakdown and his wife’s miscarriage opened up his family to public scrutiny; something he was well aware of when writing the book.
“I asked her if she was OK with all of it. I said ‘I’ve come to a point where I don’t think I can write anymore unless I put those aspects of it in because I can’t mentally explain why I’ve done all the other things I’ve done in my life.’ And fair play, Melanie was very supportive. I hope I’ve represented what it all meant to her as well.”
He adds: “I’m not going to lie, there’s a little bit of nervousness. If you’re in the limelight you get the praise and you learn how to deal with the criticism but if you’re a family member you don’t get that thick skin.”
Unlike many celebrity autobiographies, How Did All This Happen? doesn’t grind to a halt just as fame is looming.
“I told the publishers that this would be one book,” he says.
“I’m not doing that thing where I write a book up to the age of 21 then you get another one next year.”
He’s written it up to the end of last year, therefore covering the sell-out arena tours, TV shows and Paris to London challenge which raised over £4m for Sport Relief.
“If I do another book it’ll be in another 46 years time,” he promises.
“I gave it that title because it’s what I keep asking myself. Even now. You get used to certain aspects of it and there is a tipping point where you think ‘well that’s it now, I’m officially famous’”.
He concedes: “Even if they kick me off the telly I can’t go back to the person I was but I want to let people know who that person was.”
Bishop will be back on tour next year and returning to the Capital FM Arena, despite the punch up last time.
“Nottingham is a great city to play.”
He adds: “Doing stand-up is what my job is now. Everything else is an add-on.”

A League of Their Own.

"I had a few issues with availability with the last series but I made myself available with this series. I was asked to do one and I said no. I’m still really good mates with the lads. I’ll go on holiday with Jamie and I’ll see James a lot, I was seeing Freddie every week over the summer. Sky don’t know why, the producers keep saying 'I don’t know why'... it just didn’t happen."

Truckers (BBC1)

October 2013

A 44 tonne artic lorry thunders down Queen Street behind a Vauxhall Corsa, narrowly misses the Brian Clough statue and jackknifes across the Old Market Square before skidding to a halt behind the cherry pink saloon car, which has ploughed into the Left Lion.
Stephen Tompkinson climbs onto the cab roof, shouts obscenities and strips down to a turquoise thong.
It’s one of the scenes from Truckers, a new BBC comedy drama, set and filmed in Nottingham, which begins next week.
And it’ll show more of the city and surrounding areas than anything else we’ve seen on the small (or big) screen befoere.
“Nottingham is in the DNA of the series,” says writer Billy Ivory, who is also the executive producer on Truckers, which runs for five one-hour episodes from Thursday.
“I’m really proud of the Nottingham setting,” says the Southwell-raised writer, who was nominated for a Bafta for his screenplay for the film Made In Dagenham.

“Common As Muck was set in Nottingham but they shifted it to Manchester. And I had no power in those days to stop them.
“A Thing Called For Love was the first time I got them to come to the city, which was good but I kept saying I wanted Nottingham to be one of the characters.
“We got that with Truckers. Right from the opening shot you are looking right across the city. And the final shot of that first episode is Stephen and Ashleigh Walters walking down to the Old Market Square from the Theatre Royal. It’s a long, long shot and it’s almost like they’re being absorbed by the city.”
Truckers tells the story of a small family trucking firm and stars Stephen Tompkinson (Ballykissangel, Brassed Off), Ashley Walters (Top Boy) and John Dagleish (Lark Rise to Candleford).
“I’m ever so proud of it,” says Billy.
“And I think it’s very funny. It makes me laugh a lot. I think it’s got a very Nottingham sense of humour; that kind of gallows humour.”
It was filmed entirely in and around the city over a six week period during early summer. Locations included Hockley, Carlton, St Ann’s, Cossall, Wollaton Park and Eastwood, where the trucking firm is based.
To ensure the character of Nottingham came through, Billy insisted that each actor used a Nottingham accent.
“I was watching Saturday Night and Sunday Morning for about the 90th time recently, which I do every now and again when I need inspiration, and half of them can’t do it. They’re doing a stock northern accent.
“All of the cast on Truckers did a great job,” he says.

“Steve asked me to record some of his lines and send them to him but I told him that I’ve got a really weird accent. Where I grew up was kind of North Notts. Some of the lads I worked with on the bins would say ‘foo’  - ‘I’ll have a foo more o’ them.’ And it’s softened up since then because I’ve poshed up. But I did him a bit anyway and sent it off. When I saw the first day’s rushes I thought he was bang on the money.”
He and Tompkinson had wanted to work together for decades, since meeting while working on Minder in 1991.
“He did a regular stint on that and I wrote a bit for him then,” he says.
“We’d been tying to get something together workwise for a long old time but it just never happened until Truckers.”
He rates Tompkinson’s ability to be able to balance comedy and drama.
“My stuff should be funny one minute and then the next it makes you step back. I’ve been in situations before when you’re on set or at an audition and you say to an actor ‘it’s comedy but it’s very real’ and they play it like it’s a Ken Loach. I tell them ‘Yes, it’s real but it’s funny as well’ and then they start doing pantomime.
“But Steve can do it. George Cole was the same; his comic timing in Minder was just amazing. And Tim Healy can do that,” he says of the star of his Nineties comedy series Common As Muck, which had drawn on his own experiences working as a bin man in Notts.
Billy insisted that Tompkinson piled on the pounds for his role as Malachi, a driver going through a messy divorce.
“The bloke he’s playing has gone to seed a bit. He was a good looking lad who was into the New Romantics. In fact, he was in a band called Newly Romantic who were big in Newark - but nowhere else.
“So I told him to go off and eat plenty of pasta and not to worry about anything. Pile it on youth! But then he went and did Spamalot in the West End. He was on stage for two or three hours every night doing all these big dance numbers and, of course, he dropped all the weight.
“The wardrobe and make-up  have done a fantastic job of making him look like he’s carrying a lot more than he is.”

Despite the filming taking place on his doorstep, Billy was too busy to go on set. As well as working on his BBC4 feature length biopic Burton and Taylor, starring Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West, he was tinkering with the final episode of Truckers.
“I ended up writing right up to the wire,” he says.
“The closest I got to a set visit was when I drove out to King’s Mill Hospital and I got as far as the pub car park next door. I was collared by the guy who runs Company Pictures (which produced Truckers for the BBC), we sat on a double decker bus, chatted for three hours, then I came home.
“It was a blow because being on set is the fun side of it. You get to see it coming together, because for years it’s been just words on a page.”
Neither did he get to socialise with Tompkinson, who has been a friend since before either had any success.
“He phoned up and said he had an afternoon off so he was going down to Trent Bridge for the Ashes,” says Billy.
“But I couldn’t go because I was too busy doing the re-write for the final episode. He said: ‘But you only live round the corner!’”
Reports from the cast and crew about their stay in Nottingham were positive.
“They loved it!,” beams Billy.
“The producer rang  me up one day and I thought ‘Oh God, is it more rewrites?’ but she said ‘I’m just ringing to say I’m just walking across the Market Square and I suddenly realise why you love this place.’”
As executive producer he watched all of the footage as it was shot at the end of each day and the finished series with his wife and two teenage daughters.
“It’s a brilliant stunt,” he says of the lorry/car scene in the Old Market Square.
“Most of the time with these big stunts on TV it’s about to happen but then they cut away, you hear a big crash and they cut to a load of smoke and a wheel spinning.
“But with this they had did this truck careering down Queen Street and nearly taking out Cloughie... I’m a County fan, what can I say?.... there are all these stuntmen diving out of the way and rubbish bins going everywhere, it wellies across the Market Square, jackknifes and then stops inches from the Council House.
He laughs: “The producer said it was a little bit closer than she would have liked.”

Truckers begins on BBC One on Thursday at 9pm.