Actor turned author Alex Norton says he’d write more books if he wasn’t so lazy

THEY say everyone has a book in them.

But Alex Norton reckons there could well be more than one in him – if only he’d get out of bed to write them!

The former Taggart star has already tasted success with his autobiography, There’s Been A Life.

“I’m basically a lazy so-and-so,” laughs Alex when iN10 caught up with him at his London home. “I tend to wake up quite early, about 7am, and I have all these thoughts about what I might want to be write.

“I think it might be this, then it might be that. But instead of going downstairs and sitting in front of the laptop, I lie there thinking about it.

“I definitely do want to write more, so I need to apply the bum to the seat and get on with it.”

Alex, 67, is one of the big attractions at the Boswell Book Festival, which starts Friday.

Nigel Havers and Bake Off favourite Flora Shedden are just a couple of the others who’ll be pulling in the crowds over the three days.

Alex will be talking about his book, acting life and whatever else comes up during the Q& A session.

He admits he knew nothing about the world of publishing and book festivals until the success of There’s Been A Life.

But he’s taken to festival appearances so well, it’s opened up a new strand to his career.

“I’d no idea what I was letting myself in for but it was just like being back on stage again and I loved it.

“I enjoyed it so much I put together a one-man show which I toured around central Scotland in March. I had photos and clips on screen from things I’ve been in and it went down a treat.

“It was a bit of a try out to see if I could do it and now I know it works, I plan to do it again.”

The clips from Alex’s star-packed career – he’s worked in films alongside everyone from Clint Eastwood to Johnny Depp – go right back to his first appearance in 1964.

That was a Dr Finlay’s Casebook and then the launch of BBC 2 saw the Glasgow studios increasingly used.

But it was the film The Virgin Soldiers, which he went to London to shoot as an 18-year-old in 1968, that was his big breakthrough.

“It’s amazing to think it’s about to be 50 years since and I did that and more than 50 since my first roles as a kid,” he sighs, shaking his head.

But while he’s trod the boards and starred on the big and small screens for half a century music, not acting, could have been his path.

“I didn’t ever have a Plan B, like falling back on being a plumber,” admits Alex, who starts a new series of comedy Two Doors Down later this year.

“I knew I wanted to perform but if things had turned out differently, it might have been singing that I’d have done and I’d have been happy with that.

“When I came to London for Virgin Soldiers I was singing in folk clubs, including the Troubador where the likes of Paul Simon and Joan Baez played.

“But it gradually dawned on me that I was never going to be as good as I wanted to be.

“I still love music, though, and I’ve got enough guitars to open a shop. I suffer from GAS – that’s guitar acquisition syndrome.

“I see a guitar which I just have to buy and I tell myself that I’ll buy it but sell a couple of my other ones, which I never do. So the collection just keeps on growing.”

Alex has spent most of his life in London but with sons Jamie, Rory and Jock now grown up, he and wife Sally increasingly spend time at their home in the south of France.

It’s a medieval pile which Alex says he picked up for a bargain price thinking it’d be “six months work and a couple of coats of Dulux.” Instead it turned into a 10-year project.

Now, though, it’s the perfect bolt hole whenever Sally finds cheap flights on the internet. So, how’s his French?

“It’s no’ bad but I thought it’d be better by now,” he laughs.

“Sally’s fluent and when she chats to the neighbours I stand at the back like Prince Phillip behind the Queen!”

Boswell Book Festival, Dumfries House, Ayrshire, May 12-14

See boswellbookfestival.co.uk