JOE & CO VIDEO

 

THIS IS JOE'S LIFE ….. SO FAR!

I meet Joseph Gilgun giddy and relieved, following an audition for a part he's clearly dying to get. It's like I've arrived mid-conversation as he hurls head-first into stories about the pint he's just had with a "crackhead", his publicist's rapping abilities and how Twitter can "get to fuck". He is dressed with slick northern style and covered in tattoos. He talks in a thick Chorley accent, peppering his tales with expletives. Frankly, keeping him on topic is near impossible. He veers from his original point more times than the Wife of Bath. But he is warm and sharp, and the punchlines begin to feel unimportant when the journey there is so much fun.

Gilgun is best known for his role as Woody, the affable skinhead leader in This Is England. Misfits fans, however, will also recognise him as Rudy, season three's replacement for Robert Sheeran. "You'd think that it'd be a total ballache. What with being new and stuff and Rob doing such a good job. And it has been frightening, of course it has. But I'm right bloody proud of myself."

So he should be. Misfits is one of E4's most popular cult offerings. It follows a group of youth offenders who've been lumbered with superpowers that they're not quite sure they want. Rudy's power is the ability to split into two, creating a sort of twin; this happens to him involuntarily, at moments when his emotions are heightened. Much to Rudy's swaggering chauvinist despair, his "other self" is decidedly more sensitive and caring than his "original self". Gilgun has slipped into the show's ensemble format with a deft ease, playing the role with subtle precision; we are never in any doubt as to which Rudy is which.

There's no denying that there's more than a touch of Rudy in Gilgun. On first impressions he is boundlessly confident but also a sensitive soul, in need of approval. "I'm an extraordinarily anxious person," he says. "I'm a typical actor: narcissistic and paranoid and all them things. I'll have a good worry about this later on."

He is, in fact, a bundle of contradictions. He says that he's a loner, but constantly tells affectionate anecdotes about his mates. He claims that he doesn't mind being typecast, but would love the chance to showcase his accent skills. He calls himself "stupid" yet seems anything but.
Gilgun's career trajectory has been far from standard and there's a general feeling from being in his company that he cannot quite believe his luck. He calls himself a "lucky bastard" at regular intervals, seemingly unaware that any success he's experienced must have had something to do with his own talent. It also seems likely that there's a little bit of Gilgun in every character he plays. He talks about finding out he'd landed a part in Coronation Street aged eight and makes it sound like something from a Shane Meadows script. "I remember I was at my mate Toby's," he recalls. "Sat in the front room on what was quite a cool new carpet. It was made of hessian, which was very unheard of at the time. Very trendy. It was a cool house, actually. They've fucked off to France now. Toby's in the Royal Ballet … Of course he is!" We've gone off-road once again, but Gilgun's general point is that he never planned to make a career out of acting, it just seemed to happen naturally.

Growing up, he explains, he was dyslexic and "out of my mind with ADHD". While at Oldham Theatre Workshop he found out he had a talent for making people laugh. "They said to me at school. 'You'll never get anywhere acting the prat.' And I fucking have." Following his pre-pubescent role in Coronation Street he didn't get back into acting professionally until he landed parts in Emmerdale and This Is England in the same year. The interim was clearly difficult. Gilgun speaks openly and with poignant humour about the tough teen years when his parents divorced, his father got ill, and he "went off the fucking rails". He was so confused about what direction to take that he even had a bash at fashion design. "Fucking fashion course!" he splutters. "I looked terrible. I looked out of place. I looked like a car thief on a fashion course. Which is what I was."

When he got the part in This Is England he was working as a plasterer and turned up to auditions in his workwear, most likely just as Meadows would have wanted it. The midlander's unique directorial style is well documented and Gilgun clearly feels that this is where he truly learnt his craft; he relishes the opportunity to improvise. All manner of questions lead us back to on-set stories and outpourings of love about his times with the This Is England crew. I quickly come to realise that Gilgun's constant references to the "gang" are about the team that he's now worked with on a film and two television series.

This week sees the next instalment, This Is England '88, a three-part TV series screened on consecutive nights. Billed by Meadows as a "sort of broken nativity play", we will catch up with Woody, Milky and the gang two years on from the devastation caused by Lol's stepfather in the previous series. When Gilgun talks about This Is England '86 he's visibly affected by the storyline. "You watch it on TV and bits like the rape scene are hard. But that was my Vicky [McClure, his girlfriend Lol in the show] that. Even now, while I'm talking about it, I get quite aggressive about it. Defensive almost."

Woody's character is, at face value, the warm and cuddly leader of his gang, but it's his on/off girlfriend Lol who's really in charge. As times get tough – and they usually do in a Meadows production – Woody is prone to sticking his head in the sand. So how does Gilgun feel his character has progressed? "I think he's a fucking wimp, mate. I don't like who he's become." Gilgun is almost angry with himself for the ways in which Woody has changed since the carefree days that characterised the first half of the original This Is England film.
But he also understands what Woody is going through; he talks about the kids, two cars and washing machine that Woody is feeling the pressure to prioritise. But it's when he talks about Woody's scooter that it's hard to tell where Gilgun ends and Woody begins. "The last thing he has that's connected to his childhood is that stupid fucking scooter," he says. "Which isn't actually stupid. It's really amazing. Seriously mate, it's proper cool. I would sex it up. I would put my penis in its burning exhaust and I would have skin grafts for that Lambretta."

And what's next for Gilgun? He stars as a "Glaswegian space rapist" in upcoming Luc Besson film, Lockout. And when asked about the future of This Is England he holds out for all of two seconds before excitedly spilling the beans about a possible This Is England '90 in the pipeline. That's as long as Meadows stops having kids and concentrates on scriptwriting so that Woody can be reunited with his gang. "It's irritating. Cut his dick off. Whatever he has to do. 'Cos I am skinto again."

Photo's of Joe from when he was very young to his beginnings on "Coronation Street" at the age of eight!

A feature film documenting all that is brilliant, and a little bit dodgy about Chorley is being shown again after packing out theatres on its release last year.

Chorley: Where People Go To Fight, the no budget, low thrills, feature length documentary starring Emmerdale star Joseph Gilgun and world champion boxer Michael Jennings is being screened on successive weekends at The Little Theatre.

The film was created by two young, local film-makers, Andrew Huddy and Ian Loughlin, who devoted hundreds of hours into creating the film, which features famous faces such as Kate Garraway, Dave Spikey and former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown.

The film also stars many local personalities including Magic Sam, Dan the baker and Chorley’s answer to Tony Wilson, Imperial pub landlord Ivan Lynas.

The film generated almost £3,000 for Derian House at the three charity showings last October and Andrew and Ian have since re-edited the film, making it slightly shorter.

With regard to Joe’s tattoos; he has a few shamrocks, one on his right upper arm and one on his right forearm, a thistle on his left upper arm, the phrase “you’re all in it, so be proud”(Mark Herbert said it to the gang before a screening) on his right forearm, the word ‘Rural’ in olde English script running down the back of his left forearm his, “I ain’t gonna work on Maggies farm no more” running down his right upper arm and onto his forearm, two gypsy heads on his left forearm(those have colour in them), some tribal ‘nonsense’ on his right forearm, a crown on his right lower inside arm, a lighter on his inside right upper arm… there are more, including a lot of numbers but my mind has blanked.