MP3: Magnetic Fields - The Book Of Love Geoffery Chaucer's Canterbury Tales adaptations continue on BBC One next week with The Wife Of Bath, the tale of an affair between an ageing actress and her young costar. Digital Spy took time out with Paul Nicholls, who plays bed-hopping charmer Jerome in the drama, to talk about his role.
Do you see similarities between yourself and Jerome?“Jerome is far more carefree than I am and, even though he is an actor, he seems to be more interested in the things that it brings him rather than really enjoying the job. That ’s not like me at all. I’ve always wanted to be an actor and it’s really important to me."When we first meet Jerome, he’s the baby of the show. He’s got fame and money and an excessive lifestyle. He wears designer labels and has an expensive haircut – the whole works. That’s something else that’s not like me. I like a few of his things, but I would not have the bottle to wear some of the gear he has – all that silver jewellery – I ’d get filled in! For him, it works."How wild does Jerome's lifestyle get?"He’s probably had more women in four years than most people have in a lifetime – and he’s still only 22. He’s sown so many wild oats that now he’s beginning to realise he just can’t go on like that. He’s just using these girls for sex, just like they are using him – and an excess of anything gets boring.“For Jerome, having sex with a girl is just like having a cup of tea and he does take advantage of his position. I’ve seen people like that, who have girls surrounding them all the time because they are in a certain show and they’ve got the front to take advantage of that.???So you've never fell into those ways?“I got into a year-long relationship while I was working on EastEnders: I didn’t cheat on her and I didn’t see anyone else. Some people on the show were paranoid about things ending up in the papers and there was such an interest in [it] that I really took all that on board and watched what I did. Then, when I left the show, I’d go out and I’d drink and I’d do crazy things and I’d wake up the next morning and think, ‘Who did I speak to last night? What did I do?’ When it all came out it in the papers, it was a relief in a way.???.. and now it's behind you?"I stopped drinking – I don’t touch anything now. I’d had enough of it all, but I don’t regret one bit of what happened because it was my path and I’m all right today.???What's it like to be working with Julie Walters?“I pinch myself every day. Julie is the best person I’ve ever worked with in my life – so funny, so brilliant. I’ve had such a laugh on this job, I really don’t want it to finish."The age difference between the two characters is more than thirty years. Why do you think people tend to have a problem with these age gap relationships?“I don’t see it as a problem. But I suppose people who make decisions in television or film – the money men – must be scared about it for some reason. Maybe it is just because most of them are men. They know that men don’t mindseeing an older guy with a younger woman, but they don’t know whether people would want to see it the other way round.“I think everyone I’ve ever been out with has been older than me. Not a huge gap, though. I think girls are definitely more mature anyway and, in my eyes, they are so strong. They can see through men – they can read you like a book, even when you think you’re being so clever. Men are a lot more vulnerable than women – or maybe it ’s just the relationships I’ve been in! A woman can spot my weaknesses and use them, if she wants to use them. Hopefully, you find a nice girl that wouldn’t do that."
- Could you first give us a little introduction of yourself, a little biography ? How did you start making music ?
- I�ve been making music for years, I suppose. I didn�t get signed until I was 25. I was signed by Polydor. I�ll be 30 in May so I was kind of a late starter, not making music, but in getting any kind of recognition. It�s something I always did, I didn�t even think of it. I kind of gradually realised that it is possible to have a career, to earn a living doing this, but there is no great master plan, you know. I just did what I did and it�s good in a way that it took a long time to happen because I think, by the time my work was released, it was already quite mature. I wasn�t going through the first, second, third crap album to make a good one. It was quite straight forward
- Still-life sounds more organic than your first album. Did you work with a string orchestra for that ?
- No, I used a quartet. I think an orchestra can work, but it can also, there�s a balance that sometimes seems a little bit too possibly pompous or showy in a kind of a Tony Bennett way. I didn�t want it to be that. I wanted the record to be intimate. It is a lot more organic than the first one. The first album, I think it was overproduced. I like the sound of the album, but I think I spent too much time in the studio, a year and a half is too long. It cost a lot of money. It�s better now, I mean, I wouldn�t have that kind of a budget : I spent 400 000 pounds on the first album, that�s a lot of money. Now it is the same freedom but I have 3-4 months to make a record on a budget, I�m happy with this record.
- As an Irishman, you seem to go in a melancholic style instead of folk, like Brendan Perry does.
- It�s kind of strange, my musical influences wouldn�t be Irish. They�re not very Celtic, very slight bits of Celtic mythology that you may filter through �cause I was born there and I grew up there, but musically I would have been more influenced by European writers. It is melancholic but it�s more guttural than intellectual. I try not to intellectualise the music too much because that could make it very cold sometimes and very contrived, whereas this album feels more like, uhm, I was listening to a lot of Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warrick-Bacharach songs. There�s a warmth, certainly in Still-life, Stillives the song, that�s what I was listening to at the time. A lot of Tim Buckley. Find records that are honest without being too self-analytical to music.
- Listening to your albums I feel influences close to Leonard Cohen. Did you look for that, or is he one of your bigger influences ?
- I didn�t look for it, but I listen to so much Leonard Cohen that I�m surprised I didn�t sprout his head on the side of mine. I listen to a lot of Cohen and he�s an influence, not just in song but in the way he is and has been and his sense of humour and sobriety. He�s not precious, he�s good about his work, he�s quite generous with his spirit, I think, in interviews I�ve come across with him. The only thing I�m really precious about is the actual work not the surrounding stuff. Success is fine but stardom doesn�t really make people any happier or makes them better people. It makes some people want to be them and other to want to hang around them but I seek simplicity, I live a simple life. It�s quite isolated in Ireland, but it�s not in a depressing way.
- You did Cabaret with Françoise Hardy. How did you come to work with her and is there anyone in particular that you would like to work with ?
- Well, I�m trying to get Kate Bush out of retirement but I think I�ll have more luck in finding a squirrel in the champs elysees that hasn�t been run over. It�s difficult, but we�ll see. Françoise came to a black session I did 2 years ago and she asked me to write some songs for her and I didn�t have anything suitable at the time so I asked her to sing on the War on France. That was really it.
- Talking about your influences we know that you�re a big fan of Japan.
- I�m a big fan of David Sylvian, I was a fan of Japan. They were a little before my time. I was quite young when they were knocking about.
- You had the drummer playing with you, how did you feel about it?
- It was great because I was having trouble finding a drummer who would understand subtlety and Steve drums like a musician, he drums like someone playing piano rather than playing an instrument in a rock way. So the fact that he understood the subtleties of the songs he came from that world, he was the right person. I approached him ,sent him the first album and demos for the second he said he�d do it. I didn�t know he�d tour or join the album, so I said do you gig ?
- Is there a special place in the world where you�d like to perform ?
- Not really, I�m enjoying this tour but I�m not comfortable on stage most of the time. I�m getting more comfortable with it but it�s a lot of attention. It�s like when I was in Brussels the other night doing a gig, I said to the audience how are you and someone said, how are you ? how do you feel ? I said : how would you feel if you�d find yourself in front of five or six hundred people staring at you ? It�s quite daunting but you just have to sort of make yourself like it, it�s part of the process you have to do, you have to do that.
Paul Nicholls
Perry Blake
Etiketler: loveordie, Lover
Paul Nicholls (born Paul Greenhalgh on 12 April 1979) is an English actor. His earliest role was in the BBC drama Earthfasts, but it was his character of Joe Wicks in EastEnders, which he played from 1996 to 1997, that first brought him fame. Following this, he appeared in City Central as PC Terry Sydenham from 1998 to 1999. 
