John Gordon Sinclair says BBC Halloween treat West Skerra Light is so good he’d have done it for nothing

JOHN GORDON SINCLAIR was so game to be in Greg Hemphill’s latest project he defied his agent.

Still Game favourite Greg has co-written and directed BBC1 Scotland’s Halloween treat, West Skerra Light.

And John says he’d have skipped his fee altogether, just to be a part of it.

“Sometimes it’s not about the money and I knew this was going to be great,” he told The Sunday Post.

“I’d have done it for nothing. When I was reading it, my wife kept looking over because I was belly-laughing.

“I follow Greg on Twitter and I wanted to say yes straight away but my agent said we hadn’t done a deal yet and we couldn’t appear too keen.

“I didn’t want to play that game, though, so late on the Sunday night I tweeted Greg saying I loved it, wanted to be a part of it and we’d sort something out.

“He came back saying he was worried I hadn’t liked it and hadn’t wanted to badger me.”

West Skerra Light is a black comedy/horror set on the fictional Isle Of Skerra. A group of city dwellers arrive to look at the for-sale lighthouse, only to discover it’s haunted.

Lorraine McIntosh and John Michie are also among the cast, with filming taking place at Corsewall lighthouse near Stranraer.

And while there were no real-life spirits to scare off, John says the beer did vanish.

“We were down filming for about a week. There’s a bar at the restaurant and it ran out of beer quite a lot.

“I don’t know if there was a ghost drinking it – more likely they’d never had a thirsty film crew staying with them before.”

John became a star through his leading role in Bill Forsyth’s much-loved 1981 romantic-comedy, Gregory’s Girl.

It’s a part he’s been associated with ever since, despite a wide variety of other projects.

He took up writing books a few years ago and was quoted as saying that he much preferred that now and would be prepared to quit acting.

But he’s keen to stress that rumours of his acting demise have been much exaggerated.

“At the time I was enjoying writing much more,” he admits.

“But every year I tend to do something, acting-wise.

“I’ve spent about 10 years in London’s West End and, because you’re not on television, people tend to think you’re not acting.

“I have these strange conversations with people asking why I don’t act anymore when actually I’ve just played to half a million people in The Producers.”

That was a particular thrill for John as he got to meet boyhood heroes Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder.

And he has a double bill of acting jobs starting this week, first of all a BBC project in Bristol and then a film which he’ll shoot in Italy.

It’ll take him away from his Surrey home and GP wife Shauna and their two daughters, Eva, 10, and Anna, eight.

And while he admits being part of busy productions will be welcome after the solitude of writing his recently-completed third novel, he’ll miss his family.

“I’m so looking forward to being among people again, but the only drawback is being away for the next seven weeks.

“That’ll be the toughest part and I’ll be on the phone a lot.”

Filming West Skerra Light was another opportunity to get back to his homeland and ensure his girls have Scots connections – and even a bit of his native tongue.

But as both he and Shauna have family here, so he says he’s never away long enough to really miss it.

As it turned out, though, he didn’t manage to get back to Glasgow during filming of blockbuster World War Z, in which he appeared as a Navy Seal alongside Brad Pitt.

“I was hanging out with them all for five weeks, but my stuff wasn’t in the Glasgow scenes so I didn’t get to go,” he adds.

“People kept saying they didn’t see me in the city and were asking me if I was really in it.

“But Brad and everyone else came back raving about Glasgow, which was lovely.”

West Skerra Light, BBC1 Scotland, Monday, 9pm

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