An animal protectionist, in 2006 Morrissey was voted the second greatest living British icon by viewers of the BBC, losing out to Sir David Attenborough. Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades. I’m a glass-half-full person.Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Even when the first business failed, I wasn’t that downhearted. I had about five years of austerity while I paid back hundreds of thousands to creditors, but I managed to keep my beer company alive and now I have two pubs and a fantastic business partner.

Things went wrong that I can’t talk about. I’ve always got big ideas: “We’re going to take the roof off and build a viewing platform!” And she’s like, “Neil, we’re not doing that.” She’s a lot of fun and very organised and she accepts all my madness and quirks and hangovers from childhood that may manifest themselves, like not opening letters because it might be bad news. My partner Emma keeps my feet on the ground. You take the papers to court and you get money, but you don’t get your life back. You start looking at people around you, thinking, where is this information coming from? And who knows what effect it all had on producers who might have hired me. I turned into a mistrusting, quieter, reticent person.

Maybe those relationships would have been different had they not been all over the papers, but no matter what happened, the press shouldn’t have been hacking my phone or having private detectives follow me. I hated the press making me out to be a womanising love rat. They’re running out of Brummies, so they need to get me in it soon. It’s been great, but I never watch TV and think, “Ooh, I wish I’d been in that.” Except for Peaky Blinders.

Jed Mercurio took a chance on me in Line of Duty in 2012 and from there I got other parts. I’ve had a little breakthrough in recent years. It was great for getting into restaurants, but I couldn’t go on the tube for 10 years. But being the new big thing was like being shot out of a catapult. Martin Clunes and Caroline Quentin were such consummate comedians and genuinely really funny people that I first thought, “Oh my God.” We really gelled as a foursome. Men Behaving Badly forced me to up my game.

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