RENAISSANCE MAN: THE BEST OF BERGIN

Map Of The Human Heart (1993) This sweeping romantic epic has been described as “buried treasure” and while it never quite gained the audience it deserved, it was notable for Bergin’s moody and magnificent performance as British mapmaker Walter Russell.

While Sleeping With The Enemy and Patriot Games won him more attention, this was an opportunity for the alpha hunk to flex his acting muscles and he did so with aplomb. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert described this film as overlooked and attributed its success in part to Bergin’s “charisma”.

The Knacker (2003) Chris Rock once said that the N-word can only be uttered by white people on very special occasions, such as being beaten to the last toy in the shop on Christmas Eve by a black person.

One might imagine that similar rules apply to use of the K-word by non members of the travelling community, but this was still a top 10 hit for Bergin and his band and he dealt with accusations of racism by donating all the proceeds to Traveller charities.

The lyrics include such couplets as: “I boil down dead horses and I turn them into glue/If you give me any trouble I’ll do the same to you/ If you see a thing is moving you know it isn’t dead/The quickest way to kill a horse is with a bullet in the head/ I’m a knacker, I’m a knacker, I’m a sweet smelling dirty knacker.”

Paddy’s Revenge (2008) Described as ‘Riverdance for the Rave generation’, this club anthem which sampled an Irish jig, featured a fiddleplaying Bergin dressed as a Leprechaun in the music video (left). And it was a big hit a decade ago.

The song spawned hundreds of tributes on YouTube, with everyone from pregnant women to teenage boys using it as a backing track for their own antics. The track came about after Bergin bought a studio near his home in Brighton and he described it as “a cross between Gangs Of New York and an overgrown, manic, fiddleplaying leprechaun with pots of gold and scantily clad girls — every man’s dream”.