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The following is from Freeserve - Entertainment http://www.freeserve.net/entment - 24th May 1999
PEARSON: MY PASSION...(AND IT ISN'T MARIE HELVIN)
He's 40, resolutely single and was recently spotted out with ex-model Marie Helvin, but actor Neil Pearson looks far more at ease when talking about another passion - football
Which is why the floppy-haired Drop The Dead Donkey star was the perfect choice to play a smooth-talking, Des Lynam-type figure in ITV's football comedy drama Bostock's Cup, the kick-by-kick account of a fictional football club's bid for Cup honours in the 1970s
In real life, Tottenham fans have got used to seeing Pearson in his season ticket seat, using his stage-trained vocal chords to full effect, telling players exactly what he thinks of them when things aren't going Spurs' way.
"The flak I got when I had to play an Arsenal supporter in the film Fever Pitch," he groans. "I had to explain to Spurs fans that I was playing a terrible father who did terrible things to his children - not least of which was to take them to Highbury. It was the best I could do and I got away with no bones broken."
Pearson, a committed socialist who won a scholarship to a state-run boarding school, is affable, witty and his name has been linked to some of the most beautiful women in the business. Yet he has never been tempted to tie the knot. Past partners include Drop The Dead Donkey's Susannah Doyle and Scottish actress Siobhan Redmond, his co-star in Between The Lines. He then lived with actress Frances Barber for five years.
Six years after their relationship ended, the pair were together again, but only on stage, when they co-starred in the West End smash hit play Closer. Although Barber has revealed there were times when she felt like swinging a stage weight at her ex-lover, she now insists: "We are best friends now."
Pearson would probably agree, if only he wasn't so adept at avoiding questions he doesn't want to answer.
But get him talking about football and he is like Beckham with an open goal - unstoppable.
"I was quite a frail kid and only played in goal," he reveals. "But it was seeing the 1970 Brazil World Cup team that finally sealed my love affair with football. I had never seen it played that beautifully before.
"I knew then I would never have any chance of coming close to that level of artistry on the pitch. That nailed me to my armchair as a fan. It is also one of the reasons I wanted to do Bostock's Cup - it is like Spinal Tap with football boots!"
Pearson plays TV sports anchorman Gerry Tudor, whose big TV break came as an ambitious young reporter in the 70s, with his documentary on Third Division no-hopers Bostock Stanley. Against all odds, the tiny club took on the Goliaths of the game and Tudor's reputation was made.
"It's a comedy that's actually funny," says Pearson. "It also meant a second visit to Wembley one weekend. I was there for the Worthington Cup on the Saturday, then back on Monday to shoot Bostock's Cup.
"I was in the changing rooms and was given George Graham's team plan which was still pinned to the wall - now it is round at my house! "I went up the steps to the Royal Box and did all that schoolboy stuff," he admits with a sheepish grin. "It was a great thrill and a fun job."
Pearson is still a man who likes to have fun, hang loose and please himself, despite having turned 40 earlier this month.
It was not something he got worked up about. "I didn't celebrate, I was working, so it was taken out of my hands. I just look at it as being my 39th birthday with a year added on.
"The trouble is that when I say that, everyone says 'He's in denial', but I'm fine. There wasn't a crack of thunder, my hip hasn't suddenly gone. So far so good. Ageing doesn't fill me with dread - although dying I'm not so hot on."
The age theme crops up in Pearson's next TV project, The Mystery of Men, the one he was working on when the clock ticked round to the big four-O. He co-stars with Warren Clarke and Nick Berry as men on the verge of middle-age, each with his own perfect plan for living life to the full.
"They decide to have a bet, putting their life insurance policies in trust, with the last one alive taking it all," Pearson explains. "Then their wives find out about the bet and have ideas of their own.
| "I had never seen it played that beautifully before." |
"My character runs his own small company and is a health freak. But the business is not going very well and he is stressed and not very healthy."
Pearson admits that his own weight-lifting efforts at the gym are not at all motivated by health, only by vanity. "Gyms are the unhealthiest of places," he says. "They have the highest concentration of sick people - everyone there has twisted, strained, or wrenched something."
Whatever he does off screen, no one could argue that Pearson is not looking good and somehow he manages to be sexy, serious - and funny. One night time scene in Bostock's Cup sees him having sex on the centre spot of the football pitch, just as someone turns on the floodlights.
"It was filmed on the pitch at Aldershot," he reveals. "I am now going to start an alternative club where I'll have done much the same thing on the centre circles of all the football clubs.
"Oh God, I wish I hadn't said that."