The Quadrophenia icon and EastEnders actor, Phil Daniels , 56, talks boobs, Blurred memories, scooters, sex and Strictly doing it for the cash…
That’s Sting, but I have no recollection of this photo
I can’t remember it at all. I’m sporting the Dustin Hoffman look. I saw The Police at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden, so maybe that was it. Otherwise I can’t remember a thing about it. You’d think I would have seen this picture.
And that’s Leslie Ash again – I just did Pointless with her. We did British Film and we won. I haven’t stayed in contact with Sting , no.
It was good fun making Quadrophenia
I can’t remember a lot, because we were all off our heads. We couldn’t stand the acting, all we wanted to do was get on the scooters. As for that famous scene – our famous fumble in the alley – Leslie Ash was terrified of it at the time. Of the scene, not me!
I was a bit too young for her. She had a more sophisticated kind of boyfriend at the time, but I was hoping things might bleed over from the screen into real life as one would at that age, but I was never in contention. I’m still in touch with Leslie, though. Well, you don’t really keep in contact, you just bump into each other. That’sthe way it happens in this game.
Damon Albarn and I went to a fancy Dolce & Gabbana do in Chelsea manager coats
It was after we’d done Fantasy Football League with Skinner and Baddiel. I met the Irish guy who was James Bond – Pierce Brosnan – and he had this amazing handshake that crushed my hand. I don’t know what he made of us. I think we might have had a drink, I can’t remember. There were loads of posh fashion people at the do and we thought it would be a laugh to turn up in our football coats.
Having sex on camera is bizarre, but Dawn French is infectiously funny, so we had a great laugh
I played a caretaker who liked dressing up as a skinhead in a comedy called Sex And Chocolate. Dawn – who I love, as she was so nice to me and was such a kind person – plays my wife who meets up with an old boyfriend in Paris, which makes me sad but we make up in the end.
We had to do some serious acting, which Dawn found a little tricky as she loves joking about so much. And we did a bedroom scene, so I’ve had Dawn’s breasts in my hands. Don’t you worry about that.
That’s my dear departed lady Jan, who passed away in 2012
My daughter Ella is in the denim jacket with her mate, I forget her name. This is the premiere for Chicken Run. It was a great experience… I wasn’t a chicken, I was a rat. Tim Spall and me were two rats who liked chicken eggs.
Nick Park who made the film is an ordinary guy who got the minibus down from Bristol for it. No airs and graces from him. Most of my scenes were with Tim Spall and we did it all together, whereas Mel Gibson never left America for his part. I never saw him. We were on the same poster, but never in the same room.
The reason I did EastEnders was that I’d got fed up with doing worthy
…and I thought, "Let’s make some cash." I played one of the Wicks family, Pat Butcher’s nephew. I did it for a couple of years. About 159 episodes, and as you’re in people’s living rooms several times a week, I did start to get more attention in supermarkets, although it depends which one. In Waitrose you wouldn’t get recognised at all. But if you’re in Sainbo’s or Tesco or Lidl, you’d get much more attention.
And weirdly because I was married to Diane Parish (Denise) in it I used to get a lot of black women coming up to me and saying, "You like black wimmin is it?" and I’d say, "Yes I do."
I hated Strictly Come Dancing
I did it because I thought my mum would like me in it. Everybody got the same money whether you got knocked out early – which I did – or you stayed on forever. I’m not saying I was deliberately sh*t, but I wasn’t a very good dancer anyway. And my professional, Flavia, was a bit of a taskmaster. She took it so seriously.
Plus, the BBC had cameras on you all the time asking you how you were finding it. "Isn’t it the most brilliant thing you’ve ever done?" and I kept saying, "No, it’s not. I’m doing it for a laugh."
They want to give you the answers and I didn’t fit into their narrative. You had to plea in front of the camera before the dance-off and I wouldn’t do that. I just said, "Well, that’s that really," and I got voted off. It wasn’t my best experience, but it was a few quid.
Ray Winstone and me played smugglers who get into scrapes
We did a remake of the pirate stories, Moonfleet. I’ve been mates with Ray since we did Scum in the 70s. We see each other all the time and we’ve played a lot of football over the years.
He thinks he’s Geoff Hurst whereas I’m more of your Eden Hazard. We filmed this on the east coast of Ireland during a heatwave and had a gorgeous time. We promised each other we were going to behave, but it didn’t quite work out that way and we ended up having a great time.
Phil Daniels is currently appearing in Les Miserables at The Queens Theatre, London.