Actor Nick Moran – best known for his role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels – tells Tom Foot about Telstar, his play which tells the tale of music legend Joe Meek

NICK Moran is not the kind of person to mince his words. The star of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, annoyed because Stephen Fry neglected to mention his new writing career at a recent television awards, described the comedian as “a six-and-a-half-foot linen child”. He was talking to Fry’s sister.
He is a bit of a wide boy. Born and bred in Camden, Moran parades around with his thick square ginger side burns and retro outfit with a notorious swagger. He recently returned from ‘Gumball 2005,’ a kind of playboy car rally across America, where he was arrested for speeding.
But here he is, juggling a lead role at the Criterion as the 19th-century critic and artist John Ruskin in the Countess, and the opening of Telstar, which he wrote, at the New Ambassadors about world’s first independent record producer, Joe Meek.
Although most will know him from Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the successful gangster flick in which Moran played Eddie one of the four gangster, has played many parts and laments that people remember him for only one.
His recent venture as Ruskin, coupled with his writing debut has broadened public perception of him.
Meek was the first to set up his own recording studio – above a handbag shop, 304 Holloway Road, where Moran’s play is set, in the early 1960s.
There the maverick genius enjoyed phenomenal early success with Telstar by the Tornados – the biggest selling record of its time – before bad luck, depression, heartbreak and paranoia forced him to murder and suicide.
Amphetamine-addicted, talented but deeply troubled soul, Meek dabbled in the occult. He is already an iconic figure in the world of British pop whose messy end was inevitable.
In Moran’s words Telstar is “sex, drugs and rock n roll in spades.”
But people in Camden don’t go to West End theatres, his marketing team told him. The actor turned playwright was so incensed that he took his publicists out to flier the Camden streets.
“I couldn’t believe it when they told me that,” he says. “I mean we raided the Stables Market for props for the set - I practically wrote this play for Camden Town.”
On their travels they met a whole host of people who remembered Joe Meek.
“There was this one guy called ‘Baby Face’ from the Old Eagle on Royal College Street,” Moran continues. “He said Joe used to come in here all the time. He said he’d never seen anyone neck as many pills or eat as large a fry up. He’d have a two plate fry up and then get stuck into the amphetamines for dessert.”
It’s quite a story, and much of a coup as far as new writing goes.
“I mean this is a guy who turned down the Beatles four times – calling their sound ‘a rubbish Merseyside beat’ – before recording the first British record to top the charts in the US,” Moran says.
“Once he burst into HMV in a cowboy hat shooting cap guns. He robbed his album to create publicity – but it all wrong and he got arrested.”
It would be good to think that Moran might pull something like that one day. But he seems a bit shrewder than that. But there is something of the eccentric about him.
Moran harbours a love for classic cars – which he parks up in Highgate where there are no yellow lines. But not all are sleek and expensive. Perhaps his prized possession a camper van that he bought in the Caledonian Road for “buttons”.
“I’ve tarted it up a bit,” he says. “And every now and again I go and buy something from Homebase for it. It’s just a bit of a laugh really but I need it when I go on the road. It comes in handy at Glastonbury too.”
But Moran doesn’t want to talk too much about himself or Meek. He wants to talk about the area he grew up in.
Born at UCLH in 1970, Moran lived in Charrington Street, Somers Town. Now he lives in Fitzroy Square. He talks of his old haunts with particular zeal. The pubs, the clubs and the pubs.
“What’s The Monarch like these days? I bet that’s gone all gastro too,” he says. “It feels like Camden’s changed, but it hasn’t that much. They can’t afford the houses, but there’s still loads of people on smack. It’s like Venice Beach California - it’s the ultimate bohemian paradise.
“I used to be in a band called the Shankies. I dyed my hair black and used to go for a pint down the Hawley Arms. We played all over Camden in the Brit Pop era. Once we were the back up band for Blur.”
Moran is still in touch with his musical old school, but has no intention of getting the band back together. His acting career has much in store though with three films, and three very different roles, due out this year.
The Countess has received some sour reviews from the critics, but Telstar is a totally different story.

• Telstar is at the New Ambassadors Theatre from June 24 to September 19. Call 0870 060 6627.