“It’s great to laugh at yourself,” he says, “but it’s a side to me that nobody thinks exists. Everyone writes that I’m the external miserable sod, but I’m not.” He’s never been asked to comedy and finds it frustrating, particularly as programmes such as Steptoe and Son, The Young Ones and Fawlty Towers were pivotal in his decision to become an actor. He loved Bond and wanted to be The Six Million Dollar Man. At school he was the class clown, the show-off who impersonated people off the telly. As a teenager he was a ‘Perry boy’ he says – Fred Perry shirt, Lois jeans. “The loon with the blonde streaks, the wedge haircut, the red shoes and the white socks.” Now that’s comedy.

Today, in the freezing Manchester canal-side drizzle, he’s in buoyant mood, belting out Madonna’s “The Power of Goodbye”, followed by a rendition of the Spice Girls “Say You’ll Be There”, the latter accompanied by a little jig for warmth. There then follows a show-and-tell ear demonstration so we can applaud their full surface area and a gorilla-chested impersonation of Eric Cantona, with whom he acted in Elizabeth. “Before Elizabeth everybody thought all I could do was angry and working class,” he complains.

Hotline 1999