Acting is great but i'd give it all up to sign for Celtic
He’s gone from Morton to the movies but football remains Compston’s true passion
IT’S 17 years since Martin Compston’s acting career seemed as likely as a smooth and seamless Brexit. A youth player with Morton, his teenage horizons stretched no further than the flaking paint of the damp-stained Cappielow boot room. Scrubbing Adidas size tens in the Line of Duty.
‘Cleaning the boots wasn’t the problem,’ he swears now. ‘It was getting them dry when all we had was one stupid wee heater in that Cappielow boot room...’
The memories are half a lifetime away from his current existence. Speaking from his Las Vegas home, where he spends much of the year with his American wife Tianna, he spends his days cramming lines for a fifth series of Line of Duty before filming starts in England next month. On September 2, he’ll fly back to Scotland for a walk-on part in Celtic’s star-studded ‘A Match for Cancer’ charity game.
Professional footballer was the first role he auditioned for as a YTS kid earning a hundred quid a week with his hometown club in 2001-02. Battling for survival in the Scottish Second Division in the aftermath of former chairman Hugh Scott’s ruinous reign, the decay swept through Morton like woodworm.
‘If I’m honest, the club was a mess when I was there,’ says Compston. ‘It wasn’t a good environment for a young player to learn his trade.
‘Listen, Morton is a fantastic club and it’s good to see them back on an even keel. When they do well, my hometown of Greenock gets a lift and Douglas Rae, the late chairman, deserves an enormous amount of credit for that.
‘But back then, Hugh Scott had left the club in a terrible mess and it almost went bust.
‘Bizarre things were happening. The manager didn’t speak to his own assistant.
‘The senior players had just gone part-time and I was one of four full-time YTS groundstaff kids who had to clean the boots of the entire first-team squad.
‘They would be playing and training in December in the Greenock mud and you had to have them clean and dry for the next day.
‘The older players would look at us because they’d usually be soaking wet. What could we do?
‘You came in and spent every day feeling more like a cleaner than a football player. When we weren’t cleaning the boots, we were cleaning the stand from top to bottom...’
The days of players sweeping terraces and digging ditches are gone now and SFA performance director Malky Mackay fears the Nando’s Generation has drifted too far in the other direction. Hard work and sacrifice, he fears, is a stranger to academy kids chasing the perks of the game without putting in the graft.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I took great pride in cleaning the boots of senior players,’ adds Compston. ‘That wasn’t the issue. The problem was that nobody was around to train us.
‘No one to teach us how to be football players — and that was why we were supposed to be there.
‘There has to be a balance. It was completely lopsided. We trained Tuesday and Thursday and cleaned Monday to Friday.
‘Eventually it was demoralising because all you wanted to do was play football.
‘It was a tough place to be at that time. It wasn’t a happy place to be.
‘There were coaches coming from Edinburgh who just wanted to get back up the road as soon as they could and that’s tough when all you want to do is put in the extra hours and get better.’
He declines to name names, but it hardly needs the deductive powers of Inspector Rebus to work out that the manager of Morton in the relegation season of 2001-2002 was Hibs legend Peter Cormack.
Compston only polishes his own boots these days; primarily when the invitations come in to play in Celtic Park charity games. Next month’s ‘A Match for Cancer’ will be his fourth, while Soccer Aid offered the chance to perform before a sell-out crowd at Old Trafford with the likes of Edgar Davids and Clarence Seedorf. He labours under no illusions. Had he chosen football instead of acting, he would never have kicked a ball at either venue.
His professional football career amounted, in the end, to two substitute appearances for the Morton first team.
‘The last game of the season, we had to win to have any chance of staying up and Queen of the South had to beat us to become champions.
‘The game was a sell-out and I will never forget John O’Neill on the other team
talking me through the game when I came on. ‘I was a young kid, he was an opponent and he could have nailed me a few times. ‘Instead, he encouraged me and told me to get my head up and look for a pass. That always stayed with me.’
What followed next seems so Hollywood it should have found its way into the script of Mary
Queen of Scots, Compston’s next big screen run-out.
Veteran filmmaker Ken Loach was seeking novice actors to star in Sweet Sixteen, a bittersweet, angry, heartbreaking movie set in post-industrial Greenock. A pupil of St Columba’s High School, Compston was cajoled into going along to an open audition by his PE teacher.
‘I actually had to get permission from the Morton manager, Peter Cormack, to do the film,’ he recalls. ‘We filmed in May and June and came back for pre-season a couple of days later.
‘But the film won an award at Cannes and all the hype was building. ‘And then I had to ask myself the question: “What do you want to do?”.’
Handing in his notice to Morton, he took his chances with acting. There were roles in Monarch of
the Glen and Filth, the movie based on an Irvine Welsh book.
He also starred as Glasgow businessman Paul Ferris in The
Wee Man and played serial killer Peter Manuel in a BBC drama.
Yet the part for which he’s best known is that of waist-coated rottweiler Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott in Line of Duty.
The critical acclaim is nice. But football remains his first love.
A six-month contract from Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers and he would give up acting tomorrow.
‘Of course I would,’ he laughs. ‘No question. ‘It’s the dream. The money these guys make over a four-year contract now...
‘Listen, we do all right in this game but it’s crazy money kicking around football these days.
‘I love my job. But I don’t talk to my mates in the pub about acting or the parts I play. I talk to them about Celtic.’
He will rise early to walk the dog today then stick on Celtic TV to watch the SPFL flag being unfurled by Danny McGrain at Parkhead. Next month, he’ll pull on a green and white shirt once again for a cause — and a club — close to his heart.
‘I’ve been very lucky through my acting work to meet Hollywood royalty like Sir Sean Connery and Michael Caine,’ adds Compston. ‘But the only time I’ve been tongue-tied and shaking was when I was sitting next to Henrik Larsson. I couldn’t speak to him or look in his direction.
‘The people I am playing with in these games are legends of my childhood, my football heroes. That whole team from the Martin O’Neill era. They mean so much to me as a fan.
‘Stan Petrov, Chris Sutton, even Scott Brown, the current captain, asks me about Line of Duty or films I’m doing and all I can do is stand there thinking: “Jesus, this is Scott Brown I’m talking to...”.’
A patron and fund-raiser for the Ardgowan Hospice in Greenock, Compston — like most people — has been impacted by cancer.
‘My uncle Joe Hendry passed away in the Ardgowan Hospice seven or eight years ago,’ he reveals. ‘It became a protracted, drawn-out thing and the care the hospice gave, not only to Uncle Joe, but my grandparents and parents and the entire family is something I will never forget.
‘As a club, Celtic have been affected by what the likes of Stan Petrov has gone through and what big John Hartson has gone through and you become friendly with the guys.
‘It affects pretty much everybody now and it’s great we can raise funds by trying to have a bit of fun as well.’
A starring role on Britain’s finest crime drama is a living. But it’s not playing for Celtic.
‘Had I been given a chance of being a Celtic player, I would have gone for that before acting,’ he concedes. ‘But I’m a realist. Had I stuck with Morton, my level as a player might have been the Championship or lower reaches of the Scottish Premiership.
‘Playing at Celtic Park in front of 60,000 is the part I always wanted.’
l Tickets for A Match for Cancer, sponsored by Dafabet, at Celtic Park on September 8 (kick-off 2pm), cost £14 for adults and £6 for concessions. Tickets are available to purchase online at www. celticfc.net [http://www. celticfc.net], by calling 0871 226 1888 or by visiting the Celtic Ticket Office.