Phil Daniels article in Saturday Times

[Brian Cady <cadyb@home.com>]

Hard act to follow From parka life in Quadrophenia to Parklife, he has played
the crafty Cockney geezer.
And, says Lisa Verrico, Phil Daniels isn't growing old gracefully with his
latest TV role.

Phil Daniels wants to meet at either Soho House or the Groucho Club. Both are
members-only bars in the West End of London, frequented by media movers and
shakers and famous for their celebrity clientele. Blur - Daniels' sometime
partners-in-pop - often spend their evenings flitting between the two. Ditto
Keith Allen and Damien Hirst, Daniels' drinking buddies. In the end, we settle
on a Friday afternoon at Soho House, the slightly hipper option. 

When I arrive, I expect to see Daniels propping up the bar, chewing the fat with
at least a couple of loud-mouthed mates. Instead, he's upstairs in a small
sitting-room, perched awkwardly on the edge of a sofa. He wants to wait until
everyone leaves the room before we start the interview. For the next few
minutes, he won't say a word. He refuses his PR's offer of a third cappuccino
and stares at his feet. Later, he will claim that interviews make him nervous.

Public perceptions of Phil Daniels, now 40, date back to the release of
Quadrophenia, Franc Roddam's 1979 big-screen take on The Who's rock opera. In
his first major film role, the then 18-year-old played pill-popping,
trouble-making mod Jimmy Cooper. Within a year, he had reinforced his bad boy
reputation with the role of "Slasher" Richards in the brutal borstal drama Scum
and as Hazel O'Connor's manager in the music business fable Breaking Glass. Ever
since, casting agents have favoured Daniels for non-PC parts which involve bad
language, bad behaviour and the odd dodgy deal. 

"I guess that is how people see me," admits Daniels, in his trademark Cockney
accent. "If they didn't, I wouldn't keep getting offered that type of part. It's
because of Quadrophenia. I've had loads of very different roles. I've played
gentle guys and caring husbands. But no one remembers them. I've had to accept
that I'll always be Jimmy. I fought it for a long time. But five, maybe ten
years ago, I changed my mind." 

Daniels' latest big part will do little to alter his image. In Sex, Chips and
Rock'n'Roll, a six-part BBC1 drama which has just started, he plays a sleazy
singer-turned-band manager with slicked-back hair and next to no conscience.
"Larry's not really nasty," says Daniels. "He does act abysmally, but he's also
quite nice in some scenes. He's not any worse than the boys in the band, put it
that way. The story deals with the days when managers got most of the money and
bands got f*** all." 

Set in mid-Sixties Manchester and shot in Rochdale, Windsor and the East End of
London over five months last year, Sex, Chips and Rock'n'Roll also stars former
Brookside actress Sue Johnston, David Threlfall (with whom Daniels first worked
on Scum) and The Crow Road's Joe McFadden, complete with silly hair extensions.
The series centres on teenage twin sisters Ellie and Arden Brookes - played
brilliantly by newcomers Gillian Kearney and Emma Cooke - who leave school eager
to escape their stuffy, small-town lives. Despite the strong cast and a witty
script, Daniels reveals that there were problems on set. 

"It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to make," he says. "There was a lot
of, er, shouting. I don't want to go into it too much. Let's just say that, at
times, it wasn't a pleasant set to be on. There was friction between people on
the production side over artistic things. It had nothing to do with the actors.
They all coped really well." 

According to Daniels, director John Woods quit before filming had finished.
Writer Debbie Horsfield had to step in to direct the last hour. Although Daniels
didn't have to audition, he claims not to know if the role of Larry B. Cool was
written with him in mind. If it wasn't, it may as well have been. Besides
turning in a convincing performance, Daniels (like McFadden) sings several songs
on screen, one of which, Why Oh Why, appears on the soundtrack album to the
series. "I loved my part as soon as I read the script," he insists. "It suits me
that Larry is a singer. He's also a one-hit wonder, and since I was a one-hit
wonder too, I thought he'd be quite good to play."

Five years ago, as guest vocalist on Blur's Britpop anthem Parklife, Daniels
fulfilled a lifelong ambition to become a pop star, albeit briefly. 

"I didn't even know who Blur were until they asked me to sing on their song," he
says. "I had a great time with them, though. It fulfilled all my pop star
fantasies perfectly. At gigs, I only had to come on for one song and it was
always the encore. As soon as I appeared, the crowd went mental. I'd sing a
couple of lines, walk off and then have a bit of a party. That was it. 

"The first time I sang Parklife live, I was appearing in a West End production
of the musical Carousel. I came off stage, got in a car, went to Shepherds Bush
Empire and got back on stage with Blur. It was like two totally different
worlds. I went from being watched by the blue-rinse mob to watching kids getting
passed along on top of the crowd. Which one was better? "What do you think?" 

Daniels may not have known Blur from Oasis - today he insists that his favourite
chart acts are S Club 7 and Steps - but he was no stranger to being in a band.
At the age of 15, he and some schoolfriends formed a group called Renoir. "We
were Impressionist rock," says Daniels, grimacing. "I sang and played guitar. We
did everything from ballads to rock songs but we weren't very good." 

After four years and the success of Quadrophenia, Renoir had a line-up
reshuffle, signed a record deal and changed its name to Phil Daniels and The
Cross, a reference to London's King's Cross, where Daniels still lived with his
mum and dad. In November 1979, the band released an album, Phil Daniels and The
Cross. 

"It didn't do very well," recalls Daniels. "It was all right though. Our problem
was punk. When that came along, it kicked the s*** out of everyone who wasn't a
punk. And I wasn't willing to become one. The record company wanted me to be a
mod really. I didn't want to be one of them either. Maybe if I'd followed that
path, we would have been more successful." 

By then, however, Daniels must have guessed that his future lay in acting,
although he had far from a typical RADA background. An only child, he grew up in
a working-class environment in King's Cross. His father was a caretaker in a
nearby block of flats and his mother an accounts clerk. "There was talk of me
being an electrician," he recalls. "That's what my dad would have wanted. He was
a very practical man. I was the opposite. I was also very headstrong." 

At the age of 11, entirely by accident, Daniels discovered acting. "It was
during the summer holidays," he says. "I was with a gang of lads, just hanging
around King's Cross. We all went to the same local school, Argyll Primary.
Someone found out that this woman Anna Scher, was running a drama club in our
school hall. I really fancied one of the girls who was going, so one afternoon,
we followed a group of kids in there. 

"We were sat at the back, watching, but somehow Anna managed to get us involved.
I've no idea how. It was an improvisation class. The lot of us ended up running
round, acting like trees. We were taking the p*** but it caught my imagination.

		-Brian in Atlanta