Fern Britton: And now, our next guest first hit our screens as a hospital porter thirteen years ago. Then he won the hearts of women all over the country as a soldier, then he flaunted his bum, had a couple of No. 1's - oh... that sounds actually very rude !!
- - Laughter from presenters, crew and Robson in the wings - -
Fern Britton: He's laughing at that one ! But now, he is back... you know what I mean... and now he's back on the small screen as a spooky psychologist.
- - Clip from Wire in the Blood - -
Fern Britton: Oh, ouch! Here he is - the gorgeous Robson Green! How are you ?
Robson Green: I've heard some chat-ups in my time ! I'm very well, very well. Newcastle have qualified to the second phase of the Champions League, hooray! What a great game - all's very well.
Phillip Schofield: Good, that's good.
Robson Green: It's Football Fern !
Fern Britton: Well - OK, so tell us all about this new... we just saw the clip. It's on tonight.
Robson Green: It's on tonight - it's an adaptation of the crime writer Val McDermid's novel Wire in the Blood and really, essentially deals with human behaviour, and it gives a solution or a notion that if we capture human behaviour, or destructive behaviour at a very early stage, then maybe later on in life we can stop it i.e. if you spot through your socialisation process something that is going wrong in a human being's mind then we can stop it later on in life. So it puts forward something of a solution rather than being reactionary and saying these people are all nutters.
Fern Britton: What does wire in the blood mean then ? That's a DNA thing or something ?
Robson Green: Well it means two things. It's actually 'the wire in the blood', a quote from a T.S. Elliot poem, don't ask me which poem, excuse my ignorance for that, but psychologists use it as a 'kink' in the genetic make-up of a person - a 'wire' in the blood. Something obstructing, something that we perceive as the norm.
Fern Britton: So something's not wired up, not quite right ?
Robson Green: Yes - something just doesn't make sense. I worked with a wonderful clinical psychologist, Julian Boon, and he said never underestimate the notion when you grandmother says: "I always knew he would grow up to be a bad 'un," and he's actually - 9 times out of 10 - it's quite right, don't disregard that. And scientists didn't capture Fred West, it was actually a cop who had half an idea that something wasn't quite right. And it's also a series that's saying we are blind to these terrible things. I mean Fred West had neighbours...
Fern Britton: Yes - close neighbours.
Robson Green: Very close neighbours. There were terrible things going on there, and it didn't take an Oxford Don to work out that digging up the garden at three o'clock in the morning means there's something up. You know what I mean ?
Phillip Schofield: It's as you say; in the end it was just a policeman's intuition, it's just someone saying that's just not right...
Robson Green: It's this time in the day and it's a terrible thing to talk about but you know, one of his family were missing and a cop picked up on that. Fred West by definition was subnormal anyway and you will find that one in four serial killers are subnormal.
Phillip Schofield: So how much work, and it's quite obvious you have done a lot of research - you have done a lot of work, and obviously we have read the books which are terrific books.
Robson Green: Sure.
Phillip Schofield: But what is Tony Hill like ? What sort of person is he ?
Robson Green: I think he's a loser. I mean really, he's a person who is a loser in relationships with women and the 'norm'. Because if you have all these things working with the people who have done terrible acts of destruction, and destruction is the right word, don't lets use this biblical term 'evil' because in a way you're glorifying what these people do.
If you harbour all this information then it's very difficult to articulate that to any normal being, so talking about football, or you know, a 9 - 5 job is very difficult for him, and there's a little sequence with the wonderful Hermione Norris who I team up with, he asks her about her relationship and she says: "Well my fella left me because sex with me wasn't worth a three hour drive," and she says: "What about you?" "Well - sex with me definitely isn't worth a 3 hour drive, maybe a five minute walk - if it's not raining." So in that respect he's unable to articulate himself to others.
Fern Britton: So he's a brilliant psychologist who is used to working with murderers once they're caught and charged and imprisoned.
Robson Green: Sure. That's right.
Fern Britton: But Hermione, who plays Carol, she's the person who's wanting you in at the very beginning to get into the mind of the murderer before they've even caught him. Is that correct ?
Robson Green: Hermione's character, Carol Jordon, a very, very strong character, has a notion that there's a link between all of these murders that are going on in this Northern town. Her police cast don't believe in her and that's why she brings me in on the team and so we have this respect of each other's notions of actually something isn't quite right, and the signatures lead towards serial killing because there is a definition that once a person has killed four times you are then labelled as a serial killer, and I didn't know that until I did the series.
Fern Britton: It's four times is it? Good lord, you would have thought twice would have been...
Robson Green: Absolutely, you would have thought there's a rabbit off wouldn't you ?
Fern Britton: We've got a clip of you and Hermione together, can we play that one first? Have a look at this one.
Fern Britton: Yes - one of those people who's absolutely brilliant with academic stuff but on a day to day level not that bright.
Robson Green: Sure. Absolutely, but he has an interesting notion about the way people think. If I wanted to know more about you guys and you invited me to your house - downstairs is the world you want to present to everybody. But if I wanted to know more about your mind - invite me into your bedroom. That's what they all say. There you go!
Fern Britton: Did he just say that ?
Phillip Schofield: He did indeed. You've just got to look at today's paper to see what's going on! (reference to an article in the daily newspaper about Fern)
- - Laughs all around - -
Fern Britton: Turn that over, I don't like that there.
Phillip Schofield: So quite obviously for you, and you've said you've got big scenes - they are ten page scenes - quite intense.
Robson Green: Yeah, and really ups the ante for British television. I mean you harp back to the 50's and one of my favourite films is "Inherit the Wind" by Spencer Tracy, not by Spencer Tracy, with Spencer Tracy in it, just the stuff he has to say and the intelligence behind it and in just one take, and we want to bring that intelligence and that philosophy and that high production value to our show, and I think we have achieved that. I have to say I've nearly hit 200 hours of drama and this is the finest six I think to date.
Fern Britton: Let's say - it starts tonight at nine o'clock and it's a two-parter and the next episode is Tuesday?
Robson Green: Next Thursday.
Fern Britton: And then there are two more stories and both of them have two parts to come after that?
Robson Green: Absolutely - two more parts. It's a block of three two's.
Fern Britton: Robson, lovely to meet you.
Robson Green: You too.
Phillip Schofield: Thank you very much indeed. You're going to stop around aren't you?
Phillip Schofield: I don't know if Robson's actually raised your blood pressure this morning, but if he has then we will take it one step further and up the ante and give you the chance to burst a blood vessel. You can email your questions in to Robson and you never know, he may very well answer them. So drop a line right now and Robson will be back a little bit later answering your questions, after the news.
- - Phillip & Robson sitting at a table - -
Phillip Schofield: We've got loads of emails as you can imagine. Thank you very much indeed for sending them in. We will start straight away - do you see much of Jerome Flynn these days?
Robson Green: I do, yeah, since we worked together in Soldier Soldier we've been very close ever since. I spoke to him recently and he's busy rehearsing a biopic of Tommy Cooper's life story in the West End, which I think starts January next year. Yeah, I see him a lot.
Phillip Schofield: Now you're not dueting with Jerome, is there anyone else you would like to duet with?
Robson Green: The only duet going on at the minute is me and my wife Vanya. She plays a damn good tune!
Phillip Schofield: You've got this new album out at Christmas.
Robson Green: That's right, this album that comes out on December 2nd was a result of me doing a film called Me & Mrs Jones in which I play a journalist who falls in love with the Prime minister...
- - Robson is served scallops by Fern - -
Robson Green: ...the album was a result of that and it's just a series of old love songs which I like singing, and I was a singer before I was an actor and toured for many years with an acapella group. We did the Phil Spector numbers with a wonderful acapella group called the Workie Tickets and we supported acts like Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, Hank Wangford Band and the Flying Pickets, so it's something I've enjoyed doing and something I'll continue doing, and I do musicals. This is some of my favourite songs on the album and I really enjoyed doing it.
Fern Britton: When's it out ?
Robson Green: 2nd December.
Fern Britton: 2nd December - and it's called?
Robson Green: It's called Moment in Time.
Phillip Schofield: Here - there you go.
- - Philip Schofield hands Fern a copy of Moment in Time - -
Robson Green: That's me...
Phillip Schofield: Corina from Bristol says she thinks you are one on the sexist men on TV, and wondered if you'd ever considered doing a nude calendar for Christmas ?
Robson Green: I was offered it !
Phillip Schofield: Were you ? Turned it down ?
Robson Green: Aye! Nah - the money wasn't right !
- - Laughs all around - -
Robson Green: I'm hitting 40 and all that notion is pure media invention and you know, the six pack doesn't exist anymore. I can't do that chesty stuff anymore - it's all going Phillip. It's sad.
Phillip Schofield: I know what you mean.
Fern Britton: The computer does it all for you!
Robson Green: The computer does it all for you? Oh well, I'll get Pirelli back on the phone then!
Fern Britton: Yeah, I'm not saying anything but there may be, next week, a naked calendar quite close to the program but I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Phillip Schofield: Good gracious, you'd better not then.
Phillip Schofield: You once said that you didn't research for your roles. How did you find researching for Dr Hill and his profession?
Robson Green: Well, firstly actors pretend and we fake sincerity and if you fake sincerity you've cracked it. I'm not going after a show like Wire in the Blood going "I actually know what a clinical physiologist thinks". It would be wrong of me to do so and incredibly irresponsible as well and I'm not a method actor. I met Julian Boon - wonderful human being and I got certain nuances from him, and characteristics, but as far as taking work home and thinking like a psychologist- forget it.
Phillip Schofield: What about movies? Would you like to go into film?
Robson Green: It is the natural progression. I signed a deal with ITV which was for quite few hours, 32 hours, and was unable to do a Billy Friedkin movie; Billy Friedkin, director of Exorcist and French Connection, because of the contract I had with ITV I was unable to do that. But now that I'm out of that contract I'm doing a wonderful series for BBC called Trust and there's a European movie coming and there's offers from America which is all very nice.
Fern Britton: Wow, Robson !
Robson Green: And I think that's the result of doing good work and not the aspiration to go there. I think that's a mistake a lot of people make you know. You think, "right, that's where I want to get to" rather than than going "let's start with a script, let's get really good writing" and there's your audition piece. I think it's best to be invited over rather than go over and see what happens.
Fern Britton: Yes, I think you're probably right. What has happened to your lovely Geordie accent? It's not quite as broad as it was.
Robson Green: It's alright! It was broad last night I tell you, when Bellamy stuck the 3rd one in - I woke Taylor up jumping towards the air! It's funny because you know, when I talk to me mum and me dad, and I've got a lovely friend in Northumberland called Gordon Evens, and when we talk like that you know we're all broad and nobody knows what I'm talking about. But you know, if you want to get south of the Tyne and make everyone interested in what you have to say you have to work with it...
Fern Britton: Is it a conscious thing or its just happened?
Robson Green: It just happened you know and there's nothing wrong in that.
Fern Britton: Mixing with all different groups? No, nothing wrong with it, but a Geordie accent is a good one too.
Robson Green: It's lovely, it's got a lovely note to it and it's one of the hardest to do for any actor actually.
Phillip Schofield: It's also very fashionable now. Hugely fashionable.
Robson Green: Is it? Marvellous !
Phillip Schofield: Thank you.
Fern Britton: It was lovely to meet you.
Robson Green: You too.
Fern Britton: And his eyes really are as blue as they are on screen, they are incredibly blue.
- - Robson flutters his eyes and smiles - -
Fern Britton: Have you got lenses in or anything ?
Robson Green: I have not, no. They're from me mam !
Fern Britton: Wire in the Blood starts tonight at nine o'clock on ITV1 and concludes next Thursday.