John Thomson
In a career spanning three decades, John Thomson has played many a comedy character – usually with an accent and a dodgy wig. But there’s one part the 49-year-old covets more than any other.
‘I’d love to play a Bond villain,’ says Thomson. ‘The brief is simple, and always the same: megalomaniac. But I don’t know what take I’d have on it, or what prosthetic I’d go for,’ he muses. ‘Maybe a wooden ear.’
You never have to wait long for Thomson to say something funny. And although the Cold Feet star didn’t intend to be a comic actor – in his youth, serious stage roles were more his thing – he’s been making people laugh since childhood.
Adopted as a baby, Thomson grew up in Preston and admits he was a typical class clown. If he wasn’t impersonating his teachers, it was famous faces from TV. ‘My superpower is being able to do any voice, any accent,’ he says. ‘All my reports said “He has the intelligence to do anything he wants, but chooses to entertain his classmates.” Thankfully I went with what I knew.’
Acting was a natural fit. He joined his local am-dram society, playing leads in everything from Joseph to Jesus Christ Superstar, and ambitions of a stage career took hold. At 17 he played Mickey in Blood Brothers, ‘and even though it was an amateur show, it sold out. That was the point when I knew I’d made the right decision.’
In his first year at Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre, Thomson met Steve Coogan, who was already working on satirical puppet show Spitting Image. ‘Steve said “God, you’re good at voices, you should do a tape.” So I did a cassette tape for Spitting Image – Carry On people, Stallone, all the Bonds – and I got the gig. That was a Saturday job while I was still at drama school.’
The pair became friends and, in 1992, took a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Thomson played Bernard Righton, a pot-bellied, politically correct Bernard Manning who compèred for Coogan’s characters, ‘and we won the Perrier Award. We couldn’t believe it! It was a joy. And then everyone went “Right, what are we going to do now?”’
The answer was a string of TV appearances featuring Coogan as lager lout Paul Calf, and Thomson as Fat Bob, Calf’s best mate and the love interest of his man-eating sister Pauline (Coogan in a peroxide fright wig).
Thomson was on his way. Joining cult BBC sketch show The Fast Show, he moved from sidekick to centre stage, memorably creating characters including deaf stuntman Chip Cobb (“Chip, check your make-up with Ruth.” “Chuck meself off the roof? All right!”); hairy Californian scientist Denzil Dexter, who performed pointless experiments in his ‘lab-hor-a-tory’; and Louis Balfour, a pretentious, polo-necked jazz presenter whose catchphrase was a gravelly ‘Niiice’.
More than two decades later, people still shout ‘Niiice’ at Thomson in the street. ‘All the time. And I reciprocate with a “Grrreat!” It makes their day.’
But it was starring in multi award-winning comedy drama Cold Feet that secured him a place in the nation’s hearts. Thomson was cast as Pete Gifford, a loveable but luckless underdog negotiating life, romance and parenthood with five friends in Manchester – and admits he never expected it to be such a hit.
‘It’s still a shock to me,’ he says, ‘but I think it was the right time. It wasn’t “It’s grim up north”, it was “Let’s do something positive and aspirational”, as opposed to pigeons and whippets.’
The show ran from 1997 to 2003, and catapulted Thomson into the limelight. Overwhelmed by the attention, he began to drink heavily. ‘Nothing prepares you for fame,’ he says. ‘Nothing prepares you for intrusion from the tabloids, and my coping strategies weren’t... ideal. My ways of dealing with the pressure was to self-medicate, and it all got too much.’
He gave up drinking in 2006: ‘It was like an epiphany – I woke up and went “No, I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do this anymore”. I’m 12 years sober this Christmas.
‘But if you’ve been demonised by the tabloids, your reputation within the industry is very hard to claw back. It took a while for me to clear my name.’
Over the years, Thomson took guest roles in shows ranging from Waterloo Road to Coronation Street. But when he got the call to say that Cold Feet was to be resurrected after a 13-year hiatus, it wasn’t until the first read-through that he believed it.
‘There had been a lot of smoke with no fire, and it was only when we were given the actual script that I thought hang on, this looks real.’
The Cold Feet reboot, which hit the screens in 2016, was a triumph. Thomson was praised for portraying Pete’s struggle with depression so movingly, and admits he called on his own dark times to get it right. The fans agreed: ‘You get an instant response now, because of social media, and it was just so rewarding. I was thrilled.’
The cast have almost finished shooting the new series, to be broadcast later this year (‘No spoilers, but there are major things happening that will affect everybody’). In the meantime Thomson can be not seen but heard in Shane the Chef, a new Channel 5 children’s animation about a single dad running a seaside restaurant.
‘It’s an old school show, and it’s good because, without being too worthy, it introduces kids to the concept of healthy food,’ says Thomson. He voices Shane’s friend JG, ‘a mad scientist inventor who basically doesn’t live by the phrase “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. He decides that if it ain’t broke it has to be fixed, usually on an industrial scale. We have a right laugh doing it.’
Thomson, who is divorced with two daughters, has projects in the pipeline – but will we ever see his wooden-eared Bond villain?
‘The Bond franchise isn’t as jokey as it used to be,’ he says. ‘You used to have Robbie Coltrane, Rowan Atkinson and John Cleese in Bond films, and I always thought “Ooh, maybe one day…” But since the Bourne Identity came out, it had to turn a corner and be more serious.’
Yet for Thomson, serious is good too. ‘It’s very easy to cast me as Northern friendly vulnerable dads,’ he says. ‘But I’ve got a lot more in my armoury than that.’
Shane the Chef, Channel 5, weekdays at 7.20am
An edited version of this feature appeared in Waitrose Weekend in June 2018. (c) Waitrose