It’s all good news for Press Gang’s Dexter Fletcher as Proclaimers inspire joyous flick Sunshine on Leith

REMEMBER bad boy Spike from Britain’s Press Gang? Check out what the former star of must-see after-school TV is up to now.

A WHOLE generation of Brits and Aussies will always have a soft spot for Dexter Fletcher.

He is forever etched into the hearts of 30-somethings as Spike, the Ray-Ban-wearing American bad boy working on the school newspaper in UK series Press Gang — must-see after-school TV from 1989 until 1993.

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News_Rich_Media: Press Gang

“I do get it from a certain generation of people,” says Fletcher, 48, whose real accent is as London geezer as it gets. “The thing about it is, it was 25 years ago!

“But of course these things are so key in people’s childhoods that they tend to hang around.

“It’s not unusual that I’ll meet journalists around my age or a little bit younger who say, ‘I loved that show when I was a kid and that’s why I became a writer’. It’s no bad thing.”

What Press Gang viewers may not realise after all these years is that the show was written by Steven Moffat — who, as Fletcher explains, “is the guy who’s regenerated Doctor Who in such a terrific way”. (Not to mention creating the Benedict Cumberbatch incarnation of Sherlock.)

News_Image_File: Nick Moran (as Eddy), Dexter Fletcher (Soap), Jason Statham (Bacon) and Jason Flemyng (Tom) in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.

But, we digress. Press Gang is indeed a long way in Fletcher’s past. Since then he’s been a gangster geezer in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a mobster in Kick-Ass and a TV regular in the likes of Hotel Babylon, Misfits and Death In Paradise.

News_Image_File: Dexter Fletcher in Hotel Babylon.

Now, however, acting is taking a back seat to directing — something he turned to after acting jobs in a couple of bad vampire/zombie flicks convinced him that after 40 years in the business he could probably make better movies himself.

His first film as director was the tough but tender indie drama Wild Bill in 2011.

Now he’s bringing feel-good, populist vibes to the big screen with the musical Sunshine On Leith.

The latter wasn’t an obvious step for Fletcher — it’s a musical built around the songs of Scottish folk duo The Proclaimers.

He was familiar with their hits I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) and I’m On My Way, but he wouldn’t call himself a fan and hadn’t seen the stage version of Sunshine On Leith.

Yet he did have a thing for musicals — growing up on the likes of Cabaret and Singing In the Rain and, as a child, actually starring in one: his very first film was Bugsy Malone in 1976.

News_Image_File: Director Dexter Fletcher with Jane Horrocks on the set of Sunshine on Leith.

So Fletcher pored through the Sunshine On Leith script and was pleased to find The Proclaimers’ lyrics actually pushed forward the story of the film — about two young men who return to Edinburgh after serving in Afghanistan and find new loves and family dramas.

The Proclaimers themselves, brothers Charlie and Craig Reid, make a brief cameo but leave all the singing to the cast, led by veterans Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks, Fletcher’s old mate Jason Flemyng and up-and-comers George MacKay and Kevin Guthrie.

Fletcher also makes a reluctant cameo — as a drunken silhouette stumbling out of a pub.

“It was about a minute in the planning. We had this guy who was a genuine drunk, but as soon as the camera came on I couldn’t get what I wanted out of him.

“So the cameraman said, ‘You do it’. Then some of the young actors went, ‘Yeah, yeah Dexter, you do it!’”

News_Image_File: Dexter Fletcher during filming for Sunshine on Leith.