Nick Moran has wowed UK audiences with Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and the darkly comic play Four Nights iIn Knaresborough. Viv Hardwick talks to him about his debut script concerning the flawed world of genius Joe Meek.

FAST-TALKING Nick Moran is an actor in pursuit of an audience. The man most famous for letting the success of the film Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels go to his head has now completed a play about controversial record producer Joe Meek.

Now he needs good audiences and reviews at York's Grand Opera House and Darlington's Civic Theatre to propel the dark comedy of Telstar to a West End run.

The relentlessly charming raconteur quickly confirms two things in conversation at Darlington's Civic. Ticket sales are slow and he never saw himself in a starring role - even when inspired as an unemployed actor eight years ago to write the first version of Telstar.

Coming off the back of making a series of films - the Puritan with David Soul and World War Two blockbuster The Drop are due out soon - since Darlington audiences last saw him in Four Nights In Knaresborough in 2001, the thin 35-year-old seems to be enjoying every moment of promoting the play he's created with James Hicks.

Even the highly suspicious ranks of press photographers are considered ticket tout material, as well as an impromptu Darlington Arts Centre talk by Moran for budding playwrights.

Having exhausted these avenues, Moran races to the Civic's Signor Pepi's bar to work his jaw on lunch and his fascination with 1960s figure Joe Meek, who plunged into madness, murder and suicide.

"This was 1995 and I was running around Soho as an under-employed actor and I stumbled across the story of Joe Meek. He was a fantastic character and an amazing man who struck gold in the record business.

"I did a West End workshop run-through with all these actors before they were famous like Jude Law, who was the original Heinz (Meeks' protg), Samantha Morton and Kathy Burke.

"Then Lock Stock happened and this play became a back burner," explains Moran who returned to Telstar this year after the tour won Arts Council funding.

"A few years ago I had more money than sense, which isn't a lot of money, and stuck it in on trial in the West End and then it was picked up by the Old Vic workshop. Now there isn't a line in it that hasn't been tweaked or improved."

The current cast includes Con O'Neill, well known to Civic audiences thanks to musical Blood Brothers, who plays the lead with Birds of A Feather star Linda Robson and ex-Coronation Street actor Adam Rickitt in the cast.

Moran's starting point was a blue plaque he spotted from a taxi at 304 Holloway Road which says 'Joe Meek Lived, Worked and Died here'.

He admits he feared the reaction of the Joe Meek Society which has helped to promote the image of the dark-suited music creator who wore dark sunglasses and has such celebrity fans as Quentin Tarantino.

Fortunately the society and people who remember Joe Meek have acknowledged the play as a "ten out of ten" tribute.

He says: "The characters in Reservoir Dogs were all dressed like Joe Meek and Tarantino used some of his music in Pulp Fiction."

On his break from acting, Moran says: "It never occurred to me to be in this play. It was never the idea for this to become a work that Nick could ponce about in, it's a serious play. Producers have begged me to be in it because it would sell more tickets, but Con is earning phenomenal reviews... as if I'd written them myself. Those reviews might not have been so phenomenal if I'd been in it

"I flirted with the idea of doing Heinz once, but I'm too old for that role now and I like to think I'm too young to play Joe," he jokes.

Word of mouth ensured that the first venue at Cambridge sold most seats and Moran is confident that this week's run at York and next week's eight performances at Darlington will do well.

"As an Arsenal fan, I'm more worried about dropping the ball. Now it's good you want it to be wonderful, whereas if it was a bit crap you'd just want it to be all right," he quips.

A lot of people might mistake Telstar, which gets its title from the worldwide instrumental No 1 single in 1962, for another touring Sixties hits show.

Moran comments: "My nightmare is that you get these lovely older women with beehives and jangly jewellery who expect to clap along. I don't want to do that and sometimes the venues give me the impression that they don't care as long as the people turn up. I'm sure that a few will come along under that impression and stumble into a really brilliant show. But it is a very harsh play with some coarse words and a pretty brutal ending. You do get some people singing along but we pull the rug out from under them because each scene is based on the day one of the records, like Johnny Remember Me, was recorded and we couldn't have clapalong songs with the plot of record producer descending into madness.

"His life ended in heartbreak and tragedy and that's not a musical, that's a brilliant piece of drama."

* You can get box office details for York on (01904) 671818 or Darlington at (01325) 486555.

Published: 10/02/2005