He’s the Merthyr boy who has directed a string of acclaimed sports movies, she’s the award-winning actress and star of Line Of Duty. David Owens speaks to Jonny Owen and his leading lady Vicky McClure about love, life and coping with lockdown...
It’s 9am on the hottest day of the year and Vicky McClure and Jonny Owen are wide awake, ready to tackle another day in a world which looks very different to any other we have ever known.
They’re at home in Nottingham and the first important task at hand is a cup of tea. It’s quickly apparent that the couple have a strict routine to begin and end their day – and at its heart is a cuppa.
“Vicky makes the morning tea, I make the last tea at night,” says Jonny, before teasing his partner about the T-shirt she wore on The Andrew Marr Show a few days previously.
The actress was on the programme with Line Of Duty writer Jed Mecurio to talk about Asks For Masks, the PPE campaign they are involved in – but more of that later.
“She loves a cup of tea, she even wore a T-shirt on Andrew Marr the other day with ‘tea please’ written on it,” says the Welshman.
“For a heavy political show I thought I’d make it a bit breezy,” laughs Vicky.
During the course of an hour-long chat there will be lots of laughter. They are very much like a double act. There’s a sparky bond between the pair, a luminous sense of fun, which lights up our conversation. They are very good value. Candid, honest and entertaining.
It’s an exciting week and they’re in high spirits. There’s every cause for a celebratory brew, as tomorrow Jonny launches his debut show on radio station Talksport.
The two-hour show – Jonny Owen & Friends – is broadcast from 9am-11am on Sunday mornings. It will include the hour-long feature Best XI, where stars including Stephen Graham, Trevor Nelson and Paul Weller talk about their love for their football clubs and how it all started.
Jonny has form in sporting films and documentaries, as the director of I Believe In Miracles, the story of the history-making Nottingham Forest team that won back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, and Don’t Take Me Home, the story of Wales’ incredible journey at Euro 2016. He was also the producer/presenter of ITV Wales Soccer Sunday and is currently a director at Nottingham Forest, where he looks after the club’s media output.
Vicky will also be regularly popping up on the football culture show, along with guests from the world of showbiz and entertainment.
It’s Jonny’s first foray into national radio and he’s understandably excited. He is also no stranger to the station, having been a regular guest on the Talksport airwaves over the years.
“I’d been doing a few things for Talksport because of the football films I’ve made and they had me on regularly reporting on Wales during the Euros,” he says. “Also, being involved in football itself, being on the board at Nottingham Forest, I got to know them quite well.
“The head of Talksport and some of the senior producers emailed me and said they like me on there, they like my voice, they like what I say, would I be interested in doing something with them?
“I had a chat with them and they said, ‘Do you fancy doing a Sunday morning slot?’... and so this is it.”
Jonny is hoping his new football culture show will prove popular with the audience of Talksport – the world’s biggest sports radio station.
“There’s stuff that’s covered brilliantly by Talksport in the sense of phone-ins and the debating football stuff, but I’m interested in talking about football culture,” he says. “Everything from retro tops, Adidas trainers, talking about memorable games as well, doing the whole thing. I think there’s a great culture around football that involves film, music, fashion, books and all those things that come into it.
“It’s obviously a big slot, a big show on a big station, but I’ve put a lot of graft in, which you’ve got to do. So I’m hoping on a Sunday morning people will tune in to listen.”
The presenter will also be getting his fiancée – the couple got engaged in December 2017 – on the phone.
“I’m sure he’ll be roping me in most weeks,” sighs Vicky, with an air of good-humoured resignation. “Even though I still don’t understand the offside rule.”
“I’ve explained it to you,” says Jonny.
“Yeah, but I still don’t get it,” she says (cue more laughter).
You quickly learn the couple enjoy indulging in some well-intentioned banter.
The actress happily suffers her partner's footballing obsession, and his love of the Welsh international team, accompanying Jonny to the opening game of Wales' fantastical Euro 2016 campaign against Slovakia in Bordeaux.
“My thought on it was, Jonny said he has to to go to the Euros, which I completely get, he's making the film and loves Wales," says Vicky. "I said I'd go but I wanted to book the hotel, because I thought I might not come to the match. I might just come for a holiday.
"So I booked a really nice hotel, in case I didn't feel like going to the game. There would be a lot of fans and I didn't know whether I would be in the right frame of mind for it. When we got to the hotel there were security everywhere. It turns out I had booked us into the same hotel as the Wales team. Gareth Bale is wandering about, and I was a bit starstruck. I scored major major points with Jonny. I did end up going and I absolutely loved it."
The Welsh football fan takes up the reins of what followed. "During the game, Wales' first in a major tournament for 60 years, apart from the early scare when Ben (Davies) manages to clear it off the line, we started really well and then we scored. I'm thinking this is alright. Then they equalise and being a Wales fan you you think, here we go. Vicky turns to me and goes (adopting spot on Nottingham accent) 'It'll be alright. I think Wales are going to win 2-1.'
"Then about 10 minutes later I turn to her and say to my eternal shame 'I need to leave now'. She asks me why, and I said it's too much for me. How pathetic is that. I'd take the point. Anyway I stay to the end. Ramsey lays the ball to Hal Robson-Kanu and he rolls the ball over the line. We go 2-1 up and we're going mad, she says to me 'I told you didn't I!”
They're a pair who evidently love each other's company, which is fortunate given the enforced rules of lockdown means they’ve spent some considerable time in each other’s company lately.
Vicky’s job working on hit TV shows such as This Is England, Broadchurch, The Replacement and Line Of Duty, as well as the forthcoming Alex Rider series, in which she has a starring role, means she’s usually away from home filming for months on end. But having the chance to spend more time together is something they are obviously enjoying.
“I adore my job and I will forever be grateful,” she says. “I’m always going to feel that imposter syndrome, if you like, that I’ve managed to carve out the career that I have, but my family and my home life is always predominant for me and it’s always number one.
“It ‘s strange that, as actors, we’re used to sitting around at home waiting for a job, but it’s also really nice to be at home. Me and Jonny don’t get to spend this much time together. I pretty much work the majority of the year away from home. Most weekends Jonny’s at the football, so it’s been lovely to have proper time together. So I have to take the positives from that.”
Both are highly visible supporters of many charities and have made several video appearances online to promote causes during lockdown, giving shout-outs to NHS staff at hospitals in south Wales and Nottingham, while Vicky has appeared in character with her Line Of Duty colleagues Adrian Dunbar and Martin Compston in a sketch to promote the Asks For Masks campaign to raise much-needed funds for PPE for frontline workers.
“What was funny was when Jed asked us to do this scene for Asks For Masks, I thought, ‘Oh right, I better get dressed up as Kate [Fleming – Vicky’s character in Line Of Duty]’,” recalls Vicky. “So I go upstairs and find a shirt and a jacket and do my hair like Kate Fleming, do my make-up and try to recreate the character.
“It really weirded me out. It felt like Kate Fleming was in my house, which has never happened before. So I came downstairs and walked into the kitchen where Jonny was. I think I started reciting the police caution, ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence...’,” she laughs.
“It was very disconcerting,” says Jonny. “It was like having a copper in the house. I was slightly terrified, I thought I had done something wrong.”
Vicky says she receives many charity requests, but lockdown has given the pair the opportunity to get involved with as many as possible.
“I get a lot of requests and have done for a while now,” she says. “It’s very hard to manage, because when I’m involved with something, whether it’s dementia or the Teenage Cancer Trust, whatever it is, I actually want to do something to make a difference.
“Throughout the year, when you get a lot of requests, there’s not always the time to put in to actually make that change. With the pandemic and everything that’s happening, everybody has got time to give something and it’s actually making a change.
“We know that people are stretched for money because they’re out of work, but even a penny and a pound is making a difference
“Something like Ask For Masks, it’s so vital. It’s very frustrating that we’re in a position where we are asking people to dig deep to help with PPE, when really it should already be there.
“This is what happens in a crisis, people come together, communities come together. It’s been a case of doing what we can to help. Obviously you can’t do it all, it’s impossible, but it’s been very hard to say no to brightening up somebody’s day or to help with campaigns that are out there when we’ve got nothing else to do.”
We’ve all been affected by the coronavirus pandemic in our own way, not least Vicky, who reveals she’s had nightmares and disturbed sleep due to the ongoing crisis.
“I’m not going to lie, I had some really dark days at the start. It scared me, I found it frightening to watch the news, to see the number of deaths climbing and hearing of the crisis that was unfolding and then the mass confusion that followed. I had a nightmare that Jonny had died. I think it must have been corona-related.”
The actress shared her experience with her Twitter followers and was overwhelmed by the response.
“I just wanted to share it for some reason,” she says. “I’ve got quite an active imagination, given the job that I do.
“It was on my mind and the response was quite surreal. I thought I’d get a couple of people saying, ‘I’ve had a similar dream’ but there were a lot of responses, people saying they’d had similar situations, when they’d had a bad dream or were struggling to sleep. I can imagine that’s the case for a lot of people right now.
“I think it’s fair to be honest about those things, though,” adds Vicky. “It’s not been hard for us, but I think everybody has suffered in some capacity, no matter what the circumstances are. It’s been something brand-new and strange for everybody.
“What I’ve said to a lot of people is to try not to feel too guilty if you’ve not really achieving an awful lot. Whatever gets you through is okay.
“Finding your own way is the best way,” says Jonny. “We’re amazingly resilient the way we adapt as human beings and we find a way. A lot of people have done that and all credit to them.”
The couple say they’ve adapted to their new normal by adopting a routine they’ve stuck to diligently.
“My big thing is not sleeping in the afternoon, sleep in the nights,” says the filmmaker. “I also thought I’ve got to keep myself active, so I’ve been doing a bit of exercise, going for a run, going for a walk. I’ve learned to cook properly for the first time.
“Vicky has been brilliant. For years I did that blokey thing of having beans on toast. I’ve been cooking tea every night.
“We’ve just been following the rules, the best we can. Only one of us has gone to the supermarket every three or four days. We’ve tried to eat everything in the house, not buy all the hand sanitiser and toilet rolls at the start. Just do all the things you’ve been advised to do.
“It’s been difficult for Vicky not to see her family and they they only live down the road. My mother said to me, it’s been hilarious, she said I’ve never rung her as much as I have.
“We’ve been doing a lot of Zoom meetings. The film industry and the TV world is on hold, but in the background everybody is talking that when the rules do relax we’ll be able to hit the ground running. We’re very lucky to have things like a garden and we’ve been very lucky with the weather.”
For Vicky, missing her family and friends has been the hardest part of the pandemic.
“I’m probably like every other person in this situation, we’re tactile people,” she says. “I’m a hugger. It’s very difficult not to be able to do it. It’s the hardest part for me. Hopefully when it’s right and when it’s safe, when the numbers have come down and things are okay again, when that day comes it will be one hell of a celebration.
“But then you do think, ‘Oh God, look at the amount of people that we’ve lost that we shouldn’t have lost’.”
Meeting and falling in love in 2013 on the set of Svengali – the rock ‘n’ roll movie written by and starring Jonny, which started life as a cult online series – the attraction was instant and they fell in love, initially moving in together in London, before putting down roots in Vicky’s hometown of Nottingham.
I recall hosting a Q&A at the premiere of the movie at Wales’ oldest cinema, the Market Hall Cinema in Brynmawr – a riotous evening featuring a phalanx of scooters and motorbike outriders, with the pair perched triumphantly on Vespas outside the cinema.
Speaking to the pair ahead of the premiere at the time for the Western Mail, they told me about how the attraction was instantaneous.
“When Vicky first came on board I didn’t know what she was going to be like as a person,” recalls Jonny. “I had a long conversation with her on the phone and we got on great then. So I had an idea then that she was a lovely person.
“Obviously, I thought she was incredibly attractive. When I met her for the first time we got on very well.
“Then I remember we were walking down Southbank [in London] on a weekend break from filming and we were going to the Tate Modern and she turned to me and asked me if I fancied going to the pub instead. And I was like, well, yeah!
“I thought, ‘What a girl’. I think we almost simultaneously both went, ‘I fancy you’! It just tumbled from there and we haven’t been apart since that moment.
“I was going through a divorce at the time and I’d been separated for seven or eight months,” he adds. “I was single, she was single and I was living in London. So when we finished filming she moved down to London with me.
“I think we went from ‘I like you’ in the pub to ‘I love you’ in about 10 seconds.
“In the scenes in the film where we have to look like we’re in love, there really is a chemistry there and that’s because we were in a place where we weren’t having to force acting being in love.”
Vicky recalls how they spoke on the phone before they met: “We talked about the characters we were playing in the film, who were in love. In the same breath, we talked about how we felt about love ourselves and, I thought, ‘This is the perfect guy’.
“I could tell there was a lot of love. I could tell the guy who wrote it, not even knowing Jonny at that time, was a good guy. I could tell it was going to be a funny, heartfelt and romantic. I wanted to get involved straight away.
“Then I Googled Jonny and thought, ‘Mmmm, definitely’!”
It’s clear that both have embraced each other’s lives – and families. Vicky has embraced Wales and Wales has embraced Vicky. And for those no doubt wondering, she also does a pretty convincing Valleys accent.
“She’s adopted Welsh, isn’t she,” laughs Jonny.
“I’m very very fond of Wales and I’m very fond of Merthyr,” says the actress. “It’s where I spend the majority of my time when I go to Wales. I love the fact that Merthyr has that sense of old-fashioned values, a trusting community, where everybody knows everybody. You feel like you’re living in a very safe community.
“I also love the Heolgerrig Social Club [the club that Jonny’s late father, Brian, used to drink in]. When you go into any kind of bar, the telly will have some sport on, but they had Coronation Street on and everybody was watching it. That was brilliant. That was always a very fond memory when we went to see Jonny’s dad.”
It transpires she’s even been behind the bar of one of Merthyr’s most notorious watering holes.
“I took her to the Wyndham Arms, which was was on Sky’s Most Infamous Pubs,” remembers Jonny. “I took her in there and they loved her. They had her behind the bar pulling pints. It was fantastic.”
Vicky says it’s the warmth of the people that she feels every time she’s in Wales: “Anywhere you go you get a sense of the place through the people and I get that sense when I go to Wales. I get it when I go to places like Belfast and Glasgow. There’s this instant sense of welcoming.”
I wondered whether she could understand a word the natives were saying.
“The only person I don’t understand is Jonny’s older brother Chris,” she laughs. “I love him for it. I don’t want to offend anyone when I say this, but sometimes Jonny will put him on the phone and I’m like, ‘Oh God, here we go. Listen hard, concentrate’.”
“We’re going to get him on the Talksport show, because he’s a massive Talksport fan and I want Britain to hear somebody who is pure Valleys talking,” adds Jonny. “They probably wouldn’t believe how fast we talk.
“That’s the first thing people say to me when I go back home – ‘You’re speaking a bit slow, butt’. Not only do we have our language, but we’ve got our own way of speaking in English as well only we can understand.”
It seems the Welshman is as fond of his adopted home as Vicky is of Wales.
“We were in London for about a year together and then we moved up to Nottingham,” recalls Jonny. “I got to know her family really well. I met them for the first time just after we’d finished filming Svengali. Her dad, Mick, and me are really close mates. Her brother-in-law Carl, me and Mick will go out together and have a pint. We’re all very close. They go to the football, so we’re very similar.”
Jonny reveals he actually lived with Vicky’s parents before the pair moved in together.
“When we moved up to Nottingham and were looking for houses, Vicky was filming, so I ended up living with them for a few months,” he says.
“It was really funny, because when Vicky came back from filming, she said, ‘Right, come on, we’ve got to get a house sorted’, but I’d propped my feet under the table, I was all right where I was. But Vicky was like, ‘No, come on, you’ve been here six months’. Her mother and father, bless them, said, ‘He’s okay, he can stay a bit longer if he wants to’.
“I think Vicky’s mother was a bit annoyed because I wasn’t looking after their dogs any more, as I’d take the dogs out in the day.”
The pair are both from working-class backgrounds, something that bound them together instantly.
“It’s fair to say that me and Vicky come from very similar backgrounds,” says Jonny. “Although we do jobs in the media, which can be a surreal world to be involved in, we’ve got very similar backgrounds and I think that helps massively. We know each other, we know how to behave, we know when the other one needs a little bit of help with something, it keeps us both grounded.
“She knows I have to go and watch football most weekends and go to the pub,” he laughs. (I can’t see them, but at this point I’m imagining Vicky is giving him her best raised eyebrows.)
“It works really well and I know she has to go to see her sister for a cup of tea,” he adds.
“You quickly get to know people through their friends and their family, don’t you?” continues Vicky, who is a Notts County fan thanks to her County-supporting grandad, whereas the rest of her family are Forest fans.
“And, like Jonny said, we’re from very similar worlds. I knew he would get my lot, because they’re very easygoing anyway. I knew there wouldn’t be any issues.
“I’d never lived in London before, but it was not going to work permanently for me because I’m such a home bird. I work away an awful lot so when I’m home, when I’m off work, I like to be around my family and my friends. Nottingham is a great city. Jonny has a job as a director at Nottingham Forest. He’s got close mates there. It’s worked out beautifully in lots of ways.”
I ask Jonny what life is like with Vicky in the Midlands city, where his fiancée has a beer and a tram named in her honour.
“I call her Lady Nottingham,” he jokes. “She’s very well-known in the city. It goes one of two ways, either she gets left alone or she comes in and tells me she’s been asked for 40 selfies.”
“It’s lovely,” says Vicky. “I’ve never felt luckier to have the job and career I do. Without people watching my work, I haven’t got a job. If people want a selfie, if people want a chat, I’m happy to do it.”
It’s no surprise that the selfie count might be on the rise. She is, after all, at the forefront of one of the most-watched and best-loved British television series of all time. The adventures of police anti-corruption unit AC-12 have captivated the nation since Line Of Duty first aired in 2012, while the identity of the mysterious “H” was the most-talked-about cliffhanger of 2019.
“It was all really unexpected,” says Vicky. “What’s strange now is that when I did This Is England that spanned collectively over 10 years from when I did the film to when we finished on This Is England ‘90. We are in that same bracket now with Line Of Duty. It’s coming up soon to 10 years we’ve been working on it.
“It’s been such a journey from when it started on BBC2 and it was me and [co-star] Martin Compston heading up a cop drama for the BBC, when I was known for doing Shane Meadows’ indie stuff, Martin was known for doing Ken Loach indie stuff. We both thought, ‘Do they really want to trust us with this? All these big words and proper-scripted drama?’.”
It’s undeniable she loves working on the show: “What I absolute adore about Line Of Duty is not only are the scripts always exquisite and Jed is beyond words in what he can create, the casting is always really interesting. They always make the right moves, casting the likes of Neil Morrissey, Craig Parkinson and Lennie James. Rather than picking the easier option, they like to ruffle things up. I absolutely adore my job and I miss it terribly now.”
Production on the sixth series has been paused due to the coronavirus pandemic and Vicky is unsure when shooting will resume: “We had got about four weeks into a 16-week shoot when things came to a halt.
“I know conversations are being had around the industry. I know that soaps are looking to go back sooner. My only thought with that is there’s the potential to add corona into the storyline, which then could mean they could show the social distancing in a way that makes it okay for the story and makes it easier for them to shoot.”
As for Line Of Duty, any restart would be subject to stringent measures.
“Me and Jed have been doing quite a bit of press together for Asks For Masks, he says it’s got to be safe,” says Vicky. “We don’t have a vaccine, we don’t have what we need that would make it very safe, very quickly to resume work. We’re not going to be bending any rules. We’ll go back when we’re meant to go back.
“Work will come back when it’s safe to do so. I certainly wouldn’t want to put anyone else at risk. We’re such a great team behind Line Of Duty, I’ve no doubt in my mind we won’t be doing anything until it’s the right time to do it.”
At this point, Vicky cracks up as her beau has brought her a cup of tea in an AC-12 mug.
“That’s fitting,” she laughs, before adding: “His mug says ‘Save Water, Drink Champagne’, he’s so rock ‘n’ roll.”
I take the opportunity to ask the most important question I have to pose to the couple. Vicky – were you allowed to tell Jonny who H was?
“No, I didn’t know!” he shouts in the background, before Vicky adds: “What’s funny is when I got the script for series six, I was in bed and it was on my iPad. I was like, ‘Oh my God, here it is’.
“I think it was only the first episode and I said to Jonny, ‘Can you see what I’m reading?’. He asked me what it was and I told him it was the first episode of Line Of Duty and he’s like [adopts pinpoint-accurate Welsh accent] ‘Oh right, lovely’. He couldn’t have been less bothered,” she laughs.
“There would have been a few people who would not have been able to resist that, but he does, he’s very good.”
Jonny says he much prefers to watch it on telly, like the rest of the nation.
“What’s handy for me is if I’m watching it and I’m a bit confused, I press pause and I ask Vicky, ‘Why has he gone to there for?’. She’ll say, ‘Well, he’s gone there for this reason’. So it’s like I’ve got my little Line Of Duty Wikipedia next to me.”
For the future, the pair have their own projects hitting the screens soon – Vicky with teen spy franchise Alex Rider, which is to air on Amazon Prime next month, while Jonny hopes his latest football documentary Three Kings, the story of legendary Scottish managers Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Matt Busby, will be in cinemas later this year.
The biggest event in both their futures, however, will no doubt be the wedding that has been put on hold due to work commitments and the coronavirus crisis.
It probably makes sense, then, to finish where we started and talk tea. More precisely, the box of teabags where Jonny hid the engagement ring he used to propose to Vicky on Christmas Day three years ago.
“I bought the ring and then went out for a few pints after I bought it,” recalls Jonny. “I was a bit nervous because it cost a few grand. I thought, ‘If I get pissed and lose it, there’s no coming back from this’.
“There was a guy behind the bar in the pub I was in called Danny, who I knew well, so I asked him if he could keep hold of the ring and I’d come back for it the next day. Fair play to him, he put it in their safe overnight. Then on Christmas Day I put it in among the teabags
“Vicky, who makes the first cuppa of the day, remember, went in among the teabags and I had visions of her putting her hands to her face and starting to cry, but nope, nothing, it was the complete opposite. She said, ‘What’s that?’. I was, like, ‘Well have a look, open it’. She opened it and asked me what it was and I said, ‘It’s a ring, isn’t it, will you marry me?’. It was the biggest anticlimax ever. But she said yes, so that was okay.”
They then embark on a good-natured row about whether Vicky cried or not.
“I did cry,” she says.
“I can’t remember you crying,” Jonny fires back, adding, “I was crying, given how much it cost me!”
The couple – Jonny, 48, and Vicky, 37, took a photo in a local beauty spot to celebrate and ended up on the regional news.
Jonny said: “The night we put the picture up we were watching telly and the local ITV news came on and they announced, ‘In other news Vicky McClure has got engaged today’. So that was a bit unbelievable. It was so funny, though, that she picked the ring up and said, ‘What’s that?’.”
“The ring was in a box, so I was bit confused, it was early morning, it was Christmas Day,” says Vicky, launching a staunch defence. “You know when you’re half asleep, I was like, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘It’s a ring’ and I was like, ‘What?’ Completely confused. Half asleep. Christmas Day.
“We tried to get the wedding booked and we kept looking at different things, but what was going on this year work-wise and now the way the world is, we were never going to find the time. I feel for a lot of people who have had weddings booked and arranged. So we will get around to the big day as and when.
“For now, I’m happy to have a curry with my joggers on, watching telly with Jonny. That’s the pinnacle!”
Jonny Owen & Friends is on Talksport, Sundays, from 9am to 11am. Alex Rider launches on Amazon Prime on June 4. Find out more about Asks For Masks at www.asksformasks.co.uk
