Lee Thompson
1981
Lee Thompson interview during filming of "Take It Or Leave It"

The last words should appropriately go to Lee. The conversation took place on location at the Dublin Castle during the actual filming.
Many people said that you were the most convincing actor in the film. "When I'm acting I am really confident in myself. I just acted naturally really. I ignored the cameras. I say to myself "today we are going to do this in one take." But today for some reason I just burst out laughing at Suggs. It was a bit of a comical scene where me and Suggs were doing this plastering job. I was trying to teach him how to do it and was dispiritedly trying to get the plaster on the wall but it kept falling. We did those jobs in real life because we needed the money. We were penniless at the time.
Can you tell me about the sequence in Barson's mum's flat. You had to use an actor because Barson's mum did not have an Equity card. "That's a bit stupid really but at least the actress did it quite well. She was just like Mike's mum. In real life I didn't get on with Mike. A lot of my mates parents wouldn't let them hang out with me because I was a bit of a bad influence. So in the film Mike's mum goes "Hello Mikey how are you? What have you been doing?" and he would say I have been practicing with Chris and Lee. And she says, "You haven't let that awful Lee in the room again? You know what he's like don't you?" He says "He ain't like that anymore mum" because I had sort of changed by then, I used to be a right naughty boy."
How naughty were you? "I think from about nine or ten upwards up until 18 I was a very bad boy. I got into burglaries. Never violence at all. I've never committed violence. There is a bit of how naughty I was in the film but it was petty.
There is a sequence were I walk into the shop and I take a few things out but it wasn't included in the film as such because if it did it would have to have a "AA" certificate. There is also a sequence where I have a go at a member of the band. You don't actually see me hit him. You see me grab hold of him. I was a bit drunk and wound up about something and he was winding me up, so I just jumped across to him and had a go at him. He was a really big bloke, real meaty. But I won't tell you who it is. "Was it a member of Madness?" Sort of yeah (laugh), But he grabbed me by the neck and I just ran and ever since then it really changed me from the life I was leading. I mean these days we are really friendly and we get on like blood brothers."