Martin Shaw: 'I was part of a generation of idiots'
Martin Shaw seems slightly out of place in the windowless bowels of the West End hotel where we meet. After all, his natural habitat - aside from a film set – is the wide-open landscape of rural Norfolk, where he lives.
You might spot him there, walking his lurcher Eddie, or see his plane – a World War II Piper Cub – puttering across the sky with the actor himself at the controls. More remote still, he often takes himself off to the wilds of Scotland where he owns a crofter’s cottage.
“It’s at the end of a rough track in Galloway, surrounded by nature. It’s isolated and beautiful with a profound silence that I relish. I have a radio, but no TV. I do love people, but sometimes I also want to turn off all the noise.”
He’s braved the kerfuffle of London today to do a spot of publicity for the ninth and final series of Inspector George Gently. The popular BBC show is set in Sixties Northumberland and Shaw has played the eponymous police inspector – a growling, ex-army boxer, assisted by sergeant John Bacchus (played by Lee Ingleby) – for the last decade.
Unexpectedly, on the last day of filming he found himself felled by emotion. “People had asked me, ‘Are you going to be upset?’ and I was like, ‘No, no, moving on...’ But I called the gang together for a farewell speech and I was fine until I got to the bit where I thanked Lee, who has become like a son. Suddenly, I couldn’t get the words out and my shoulders started shaking. It was all over from that moment.”
Shaw, 72, might seem like a softie but, despite his twinkling affability, there is something in his demeanour that doesn’t tolerate fools – especially, though not exclusively, those who still go on about his role in The Professionals - the iconic Seventies show in which he played perm-haired agent Raymond Doyle.
After all, the conversation, has moved on considerably since then. The classically trained actor, who cut his teeth alongside Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre, has not just made his mark with primetime TV gold such as Judge John Deed, The Chief and Rhodes, but has also won plaudits for his stage roles - including a Tony nomination for his part in the Broadway production of An Ideal Husband.
Work keeps him young. He is, he says, “very fit and blessed with an iron constitution.” Indeed, wearing a pair of fashionable, Tom Ford tortoiseshell spectacles, he does not remotely look his age.
Shaw is somewhat bemused by his advancing years. “You know that line from Simon and Garfunkel: “How terribly strange to be 70’? That’s me. I’m not in the metaphorical departure lounge yet but I’m a good way down the M4 and I can see the signs for the airport,” he laughs. “It makes me quite reflective.”
It would be fair to say that Shaw is a thoughtful type. He has been a follower of the Indian mystic Charan Singh for more than 40 years, after a Damascene conversation in 1971.
“A friend from drama school who’d become vegetarian and started on this spiritual path came to visit, and we sat up all night talking. I fired questions at him but couldn’t trip him up. So the he next day I became vegetarian, too,” he explains.
A year later, Shaw fully committed to the spiritual path, as did his parents – Frank, an engineer and Josephine, a champion ballroom dancer. “My mum was very psychic and my dad was always questing spiritually.” Though born and raised in the conventional Midlands, at home, he says, “there was an acceptance and openness to mysticism.”
“My brother, Jem, and I used to go on walks with my dad where he’d put his hands on a tree and say, ‘Ah, can you feel the energy?’ We would giggle and say, ‘Oh, silly old sod.’ But, I now know, he was absolutely right.”
Shaw also embraces daily meditation and teetotalism. He doesn’t miss an alcohol habit which, at one time, included drinking “half a bottle of scotch, two bottles of wine and odds and sods” on a daily basis.
“I was part of a generation of idiots,” he reflects. “It was crazy and I blush to recall it. The people just ahead of me were all hell-raisers - Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney, Nicol Williamson, Anthony Hopkins. In fact, everybody around that time who was forging ahead was a heavy drinker. There was a kind of romance that came out of being able to work while you were drunk, which was complete nonsense and an absolute impossibility. But I tried it for a bit.”
In 1967, he was beaten up in west London while inebriated, suffering broken teeth, a fractured skull and a shattered cheekbone, which had to be reconstructed using plastic. But it was a more mundane event that put him on the path to sobriety.
“I was doing a play and thought I could have a pint of lager beforehand. At one point, I had to run across the stage and my shoe came off. I carried on and just left it there, which I’d never have done without the drink. I never did that again.”
He believes in learning from his mistakes, although he can’t quite account for three failed marriages – the first to Jill Allen, mother of his three grown-up children (Luke, Joe and Sophie), followed by therapist Maggie Mansfield and TV presenter, Vicky Kimm.
He has lost touch with the latter two but remains close to Allen. “She still lives in the family home and why shouldn’t she?” he says. “It’s a beautiful house in London and we gather there at birthdays and Christmas. No acrimony whatsoever.”
While not considering himself a romantic – “I try my best, but I don’t think men have the basic romance gene “ – he did, he says, approach each marriage with the belief it was for life. I suggest that you can’t predict the course of love, to which he replies drily, “clearly not.”
For the past 14 years, he has lived in unwedded bliss with yoga teacher, Karen Da Silva. “Put baldly,” he says, “I’ve learnt to know when I’m well off.”
For his 70th birthday, she took him to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. “It was one of the most astonishingly beautiful places I’ve ever been,” says Shaw. But he is equally happy pottering in his garden shed. “I like to make nice little sculptures out of clay. I’m really quite good at it.”
He also enjoys spending time with his children – all actors, with whom he has appeared on stage. Between them, they have given Shaw four adored grandchildren.
“It’s a different thing from parenthood because there’s no guilt or sleepless nights. Just pure pleasure. They respond to you differently, too and are fascinated by how old you are. My youngest grandson will pull at my beard and take my glasses off.”
Unlike George Gently, of course, whose age had some bearing on the decision to end the series – “he’s a little old to still be in active service” - Shaw hopes not to retire just yet.
“I wouldn’t want to stop while there are still good roles on offer,” he concludes. And no one, of course, would want him to
Inspector George Gently starts on BBC One on May 21.
