The Peaky Blinder earning his Spurs

He’s not a Spurs fan, but a Peaky Blinder was amongst friends on his first visit to the new stadium recently. Well, one friend in-particular...

“I’m here because I was invited by a friend of mine,” explained Paul Anderson, Arthur Shelby in the popular series and an actor with the likes of The Revenant, Hostiles and TV series Top Boy on his CV.

“I think you all call him the boss, the gaffer! Yes, Jose invited me in. We had lunch only a couple of weeks ago. I just said ‘hello’ to him in the tunnel. As I walked over, I was surrounded - it was like getting near the President! I said, ‘I’m just going to say hello to my friend’ and he said, ‘come here and give me a hug’, that was nice...”

Pitchside on a Champions League night, Paul was taken aback by his first experience of the stadium. “Just give me a ball!” he said. “I’ll go out there, do a few kick-ups and get a few cheers. Look at this stadium! I haven’t been here before and it’s super-impressive.”

Words that could be used to describe Peaky Blinders. First aired in 2013, the series tells the story of the 'Peaky Blinders' gang and the exploits of the Shelby family in Small Heath, Birmingham, after the First World War. BAFTA award-winning, the fifth season of the series has just run on BBC1 to an average of 7.2million viewers.

Paul told us: “The popularity... it’s amazing. I remember reading the script first of all and I had no idea. The title alone. I’d never heard of the Peaky Blinders! I googled Peaky Blinders and there was one picture. Google it now, and you’ll find a few more! I thought it was a cockney musical or something like that! I couldn’t be further from the truth!

“The success... you never know what anything is going to be. You start it with the best intentions, like a football match, you want to win. I got that script and I wanted it to be good. Me and Cillian (Murphy, who plays Thomas Shelby, leader of the Peaky Blinders) had a long chat, but we never knew how successful it was going to be, and it’s great that it is.”

As always, we wanted to know how Paul got to where he is now, from an early appearance in Doctor Who back in 2005 right up to playing alongside Leonardo Di Caprio in The Revenant and now one of the most recognisable characters in British TV.

Here’s his story, in his own words...

“I was inspired by many people in my life. I’ve always been into books, films. I love films. I’d recite them, quote lines from movies, always have done.

“The honest answer is that I was dating a girl, I was in love and she encouraged me to be an actor, but I didn’t know where to start. I talk to kids from north, south London, wherever. I had no idea on how to be an actor. Where do I go? I had no idea where to go.

“I left school at 14 and applied for drama school. I thought ‘if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right’. I had a few options. I could have been in a few football films, those London football films that were made and a very good friend of mine Nick Love, who is a film maker, offered me a small part in one of his movies before I’d done anything.

“I said ‘no’ because I wanted to see what type of actor I could become and not just be cast in movies because I’m a guy from London who has some charisma.

“I went and trained, trained to be an actor, studied classics, learned a craft, an art form, which is how I view acting. I learned it. I still don’t know if I’m any good, but that was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

“A lot of people describe it like that, ‘the dream’, but it’s very true. Here I am standing pitchside at Tottenham, Champions League, and I’m from a council estate in south-east London. I’m an actor and it’s great to be here.”

And we were delighted to see him.