It's been a long time since Phil Daniels was rudely awoken by the dustmen. Since 1994 Phil has starred in Brit flicks Still Crazy and Goodbye Charlie Bright!, hit sit-com Time Gentlemen Please and recently stole the show as 'Jimmy' in BBC 2's The Long Firm. Oh yeah and he starred opposite Mel Gibson in Chicken Run.
Stumbling into acting by accident - 'I fancied a girl who went to a drama club so I followed her in there. I was 12, 13 and managed to get a few professional parts, nothing much really just playing a thug here and a fairy there but it got me out of school and I managed to get a career out of it.' - in his thirty-year career Phil has often played characters who live life on the wrong side of the law so when the role of 'Bruce Dunbar' was offered to Phil he jumped at the chance. Phil says, 'I've never played a lawyer before. A lot of characters I've played in the past have been on the wrong side of the law so it was quite interesting for me to be defending the scrotes, drug addicts and people like that, people on the fringes of society who rely upon Legal Aid instead of playing them. Plus the scripts were really quite good.'
With more one-liners than Chelsea foreign signings Phil was initially concerned with the dialogue heavy scripts - 'There was a lot of dialogue - that was the one thing against the part. There was a lot of learning to do but once I got into the role it was fine.'
Like 'Dunbar' Phil isn't impressed with the criminal justice system in Britain as it is today and is particularly worried about the introduction of ASBOs. He told me, 'I'm a bit worried about ASBOs, which is an anti-social behaviour order, which you can stick on kids who are unruly. Sometimes ASBOs can be a good thing but it seems to me that the police are giving kids ASBOs to kids who don't deserve it. It's not a crime; you don't have to break the law to get an ASBO. I think that they're dangerous things and I'd have a look to make sure we're not giving the police too much power. Sound like ' Dunbar ' now don't I?'
Pitted in the courts against the ball-breaking CPS prosecutor 'Sarah Beckenham' Phil told me how in episode ten of the series (Damaged Goods to be broadcast on 3/12/04 on BBC 3 at 10.30pm) 'Dunbar' extracts some form of revenge, ''Dunbar's' arch enemy 'Sarah' wants to become a judge and she goes out celebrating and drinks too much and gets done for drunken driving. As a duty solicitor ' Dunbar ' becomes her defence solicitor and I get to take the mickey a bit. 'Sarah' gets to see what it's like to be arrested and how dirty the cells are. Before she'd only seen it from a prosecutor's point-of-view.'
With the like of Kavanaugh QC and Judge John Deed staples in the television schedules Phil was keen that Outlaws wasn't just another legal show and he is very pleased with the finished results. Phil beams, 'It's, different, it's fast moving, it's about the law and how bad the law is in this country. It's amazing how the rights of criminals and criminal defence lawyers have gone down since this Labour government got in. One day you won't have the right to say anything. It's politically interesting - it tells you how many kids are locked up and how much it costs to keep people in prison. You've got to watch it!' before adding with a cheeky grin, 'And it's better than EastEnders and all the crap you get on BBC 1!'
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