Actor Neil Fitzmaurice has found that living life on the edge suits him for the moment

May 16 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

IT’S late in the evening, and Neil Fitzmaurice is precariously balanced on the edge of a roof wondering what has happened to his life.

Except he isn’t Neil Fitzmaurice, the Liverpool-born actor, he’s Shaun, an unscrupulous developer, and the 100ft drop beneath him is a work of the imagination – his, yours and Alan Bleasdale’s.

Although written some 15 years ago, the themes of On the Ledge, currently showing at the Royal Court, still resonate clearly today.

Even more so, argues the former Phoenix Nights star, in Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture.

“I haven’t done theatre for about 10 years, so this was a leap into the unknown – well, a leap into the Can’t Remember,” Fitzmaurice explains. “We’re all on a ledge above the city. There’s a couple of scallywags who’ve been doing graffiti on the roof, there’s a girl who’s been involved with a local gangster type, and that’s the character I’m playing.

“He’s been away from Liverpool for a long time, has turned his back on the city, but is still swallowing up areas of land to redevelop. He has no love for the place but he’s come up because his girlfriend has got some papers and she’s threatening to go to the press and ruin him.”

Bleasdale’s comedy-drama toured nationwide before opening at London’s Royal National Theatre in 1993. This production also stars Andrew Schofield (star of the writer’s GBH and Scully) and Louis Emerick.

“It’s a convergence of different characters and how they meet and how they interact with each other on this particular night,” says Fitzmaurice.

“It’s very funny, as you’d imagine from Alan Bleasdale, a great political satire and a really harsh play, but a fantastic play and still to me very relevant, certainly in 2008 when the skyline’s changing all the time and there are buildings being knocked down in favour of apartments and hotels.”

The 37-year-old cites the Boys from the Blackstuff writer as “very much the writing icon for me”, particularly when he had just left school and, like so many other young men at the time, was looking for a job.

“Many people leaving school in the 80s had absolutely no hope, there was a terrible heroin epidemic going round and it was the time of the YTS and trying to find a job and the 3.5m unemployed. So Blackstuff was our voice out to the rest of the country to say ‘this is how we’re living’.

“There was an edge and an anger to it.”

Unlike Yozzer Hughes and his mates struggling to find work, Fitzmaurice’s story is one of success. Phoenix Nights fans will remember him as Ray-Von in the series which he helped Bolton comedian Peter Kay to write, but he is rarely off our screens, also appearing in cult comedy Peep Show, prison drama series Buried and the first-ever episode of The Office, being interviewed by David Brent for a position in the warehouse.

The Anfield-born father-of-four received a British Comedy Award for his writing on That Peter Kay Thing and has scripted several films, including Going Off Big Time, in 2000.

He currently has another two films on the go – Rough Justice, about the Liverpool dockers’ strikes with FilmFour, and Charlie Noades RIP, a comedy set in a Liverpool scrapyard, which he is co-producing with his three brothers.

“I can be a pain sometimes and I guess sometimes stress can get in the way, but we’re a close-knit family, we always have been very close as brothers, so it never gets to the point where we throw anything at each other,” he says.

“It’s been great – I wouldn’t trust my work with anyone else.”

“I love to do stuff here,” he continues, “because I spend most of my time away from home – needs must, you just have to do that to keep the work going.”

One reason to return to Liverpool, aside from Charlie Noades RIP, which will premiere in Cannes next week, has been to stand in for City Talk presenter Dean Sullivan.

“Sitting up in the Radio City Tower, you can see first hand which areas are working and the areas that aren’t,” says Neil.

“There are lots of lovely things happening in 2008, but there’s a huge argument to say that the money being injected into the city isn’t being injected into the areas it should be.

“It’s being injected into a cosmetic face lift, which it needs and which I’m absolutely behind, but there are still the really run-down areas of Liverpool that need to be looked at.

“That’s one of the reasons why I’m so happy to Do on the Ledge because it’s so relevant to this time.”

* ON THE Ledge, showing at the Royal Court until Saturday, May 24.