Bashful Aidan can’t watch himself on TV

HIS admirers will be swooning over him come September 4, when he returns to our screens in BBC One’s Poldark, but Aidan Turner claims he can’t bear to see himself on TV. At the screening of series two at BFI Southbank the actor, who plays the protagonist Captain Ross Poldark in the brooding 18th-century drama, tells Day & Night: “I’m generally not good at looking at myself. I can’t think of anything worse than watching the show with my friends. The cringe factor is too much.” Aidan, 33, left, who set viewers’ pulses racing when he stripped off to scythe a field in series one, has always insisted he’s a reluctant heart-throb. However he’s now clearly embraced his sexy status admitting he was keen to show off his famous torso this time around.

“It might have been my suggestion [to go topless],” he laughs. “I do a little bit of training. I lift heavy things. Then you just oil yourself up and get on with it.”

The star also jokingly boasts about enjoying propositions from his army of suitors. “People give me their phone numbers. There is a high possibility I won’t be calling. It’s great being me,” he adds.

Sitting alongside his on-screen wife Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Demelza Poldark, Aidan got down to the serious business of addressing rumblings that his hit show could struggle going up against the highly anticipated ITV series Victoria – starring Jenna Coleman.

“You watch Victoria then you catch us on iPlayer,” he says seemingly unconcerned. “If people want to watch our show, they will.”