The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in hit TV series The Bill has been praised by officers after helping them arrest a shoplifter.

Jeff Stewart stepped in when a thief attempted to escape on a bicycle in Southampton on Wednesday.

In a statement, a Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said: “The thief, 29-year-old Mohamed Diallo, fell off the bike during his attempts to flee, before officers pounced to make their arrest.

“To their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart, who played PC Hollis for 24 years in The Bill, came to their aid by sitting on the suspect’s legs while officers put him in cuffs.

“In policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn’t on The Bill for this week.”

The Bill was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 2010 and featured the fictional lives of police officers from the Sun Hill police station in east London.

Mr Stewart, who was among the original cast, appeared in more than 1,000 episodes as PC Hollis.

In praising Mr Stewart’s actions, the force said: “Long since retired from Sun Hill station – but he’s still got it.”

Police from the Bargate Neighbourhoods Policing Team were alerted by staff at a Co-op store in Ocean Way to a suspected shoplifter on Wednesday.

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Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Anglesea Road, Southampton, was subsequently charged with five offences of theft relating to coffee, alcohol and food from the Co-op and two other Sainsbury’s stores on three dates in April and July.

He pleaded guilty at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and was bailed to be sentenced on August 29.

Pedro Pascal is everywhere right now.

You walk into the cinema and he’s on most of the film posters there: Fantastic Four: First Steps, Eddington, The Materialists and The Uninvited.

With that level of public attention, you wouldn’t be shocked to see the actor become closed off.

Shielded by a sea of publicists maintaining a studio’s desired image and an influx of influencers replacing film reporters, public figures speaking their mind in Hollywood have become somewhat of a rarity.

Perhaps this is why the delayed yet meteoric rise to fame for Pedro Pascal feels refreshing for his fans.

In between self-promotion for his latest projects, the Chilean-American uses his fame to highlight causes he cares about by wearing “Protect The Dolls” T-shirts in public settings, posting about food blockades into Gaza and linking non-profit organisations, Doctors Without Borders and The Trevor Project, on his Instagram account where he has over 11 million followers.

In a time where a single sentence can be taken out of context in a TikTok post or altered to suit a narrative driven by a headline (and yes, the irony of writing this does not go unnoticed), speaking candidly can feel like you’re walking into a trap.

“I think it’s very easy to get scared no matter what you sort of talk about,” the actor tells Sky News.

“There’s so many different ways that things can get kind of fractured and have a life of itself really.”

He adds: “It’s sort of a business part of the way media can work really. There’s one thing that you can say and no matter what your intention behind it, it is absolutely lost in all of these different headlines, I suppose, but I’ll never shut up.”

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It’s the last line, “I’ll never shut up”, that echoes after our four minute and two second conversation in the midst of a days-long “press run” in London for the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

The 50-year-old knows one misstep in an increasingly reactive media industry can shatter the careers of many. Pascal is aware of the dangers but uses his voice anyway.

It’s that decision that makes him “fantastic”, maybe more so than his role as Dr Richard Reeds in The Fantastic Four: First Steps – a character quite literally weighed down with the worries of the world on his shoulders whilst simultaneously welcoming new life with his wife Sue Storm.

The film, directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman, stands alone in its own universe within the MCU and also features Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss Bachrach and Joseph Quinn.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in cinemas now.

It was a cold, typically rainy Manchester evening, October 1993, when Michael Spencer Jones set out to meet a new guitar band he had been commissioned to photograph.

The weather was miserable, he didn’t know their music, wasn’t totally in the mood. “I had to drag myself from home, thinking: is it going to be worth the trouble?”

On the drive to the Out Of The Blue studio in Ancoats, on the outskirts of the city centre, a song he’d never heard before came on the local radio station. “It was like, wow, what is that?” The track was Columbia, by Oasis, the band he was on his way to meet.

He started to get excited.

Spencer Jones had previously met Noel Gallagher during the musician’s time as a roadie for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. But not Liam.

“As a photographer, obviously, the aesthetic of a band is massively important,” he says as he recalls that first shoot. “I’m just looking down the camera lens with a certain amount of disbelief.”

In front of him was a 21-year-old, months before the start of the fame rollercoaster that lay ahead. And yet. “I was looking at a face that just seemed to embody the quality of stardom.”

‘Success was inevitable’

It was the start of a partnership that continued throughout the band’s heyday, with Spencer Jones shooting the covers for their first three albums, their most successful records, and the singles that went with them.

“You work with bands pre-fame and there’s always that question: are they going to make it? With Oasis there was never that question. Their success was inevitable.”

There was a confidence, even in those early days. “Incredible, intoxicating confidence. [They were] not interested in any kind of social norms or social constraints.”

It wasn’t arrogance, he says, of a criticism sometimes levelled at the Gallaghers. “They just had this enormous self-belief.”

Spencer Jones was one of several photographers who followed the band, capturing the moments that became part of rock history.

‘Noel had an uncanny intuition’

Jill Furmanovsky, who started working with Oasis towards the end of 1994, a few months after the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, says Noel always seemed aware their time together should be documented.

“An uncanny intuition, really, that it was important,” she says. “I think Noel has been aware right from the start, because for him that’s what he used to look at when he used to buy his Smiths records or Leo Sayer or whatever, he would stare at the covers and be fascinated by the pictures.”

Contrary to popular belief, Furmanovsky says the brothers got on fairly well most of the time, “otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to function”.

She picks one shoot in 1997, around the release of their third album, Be Here Now, as one of the more memorable ones. Noel had shared his thoughts about the band on a chalkboard and “they were having such a laugh.”

But when things did erupt, it became significant. “There were tensions in some shoots but they never started hitting each other in front of me or anything like that. I used to complain about it, actually – ‘don’t leave me out of those pictures where you’re really arguing!’.”

In Paris in 1995, tensions had boiled over. “It’s one of my favourites,” she says of the shoot. “It reflects not just the band but the family situation, these brothers in a strop with each other.”

What is notable, she says, is that they were happy for photographers to take candid shots, not just set up pictures to show them “looking cool”. Pictures that on the surface might sound mundane, showing “what they were really like – tensions, mucking about, sometimes yawning… This was the genius of Noel and [former Oasis press officer] Johnny Hopkins.”

Furmanovsky also notes the women who worked behind the scenes for Oasis – unusual at a time when the industry was even more male-dominated than it is now – and how they kept them in line.

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“They got on well working with women,” she says. “Maggie Mouzakitis was their tour manager for ages and was so young, but she ruled. For a band one could say were a bunch of macho Manchester blokes, they had a lot of women working in senior positions.”

This is down to the influence of their mum, Peggy, she adds. “Absolutely crucial.”

Furmanovsky has been working with Noel on an upcoming book documenting her time with the band, and says she initially wanted to start with a picture of the Gallagher matriarch. “Noel said to me, ‘Jill, you do know she wasn’t actually in the band?'”

Touring with Oasis – ‘the journalist had to take a week off’

Kevin Cummins was commissioned to take pictures when Oasis signed to Creation Records, and it “kind of spiralled out of control a little bit”, he laughs.

“I photographed them for NME, gave them their first cover. I photographed them in Man City shirts because we were all Man City fans, and City were at the time sponsored by a Japanese electronics company, Brother. It seemed a perfect fit.”

The early days documenting the band were “fairly riotous”, he says. “They were quite young, they were obviously enjoying being in the limelight.

“I remember we went on tour with them for three days for an NME ‘on the road’ piece, and the journalist who came with me had to take a week off afterwards.

“I dipped in and out of tours occasionally – I’ve always done that with musicians because I cannot imagine spending more than about seven or eight days on tour with somebody, it would drive you nuts. They’re so hedonistic, especially in the early days. It’s very, very difficult to keep up.”

Cummins says the relationship between Noel and Liam was “like anybody’s relationship, if you’ve got a younger brother – he’d get on your nerves.”

During the shoot for the City shirt pictures, he says, “Liam kicked a ball at Noel, Noel pushed him, Liam pushed him back. They have a bit of a pushing match and then they stop and they get on with it.”

Another time, following a show in Portsmouth, “as soon as we got [to the hotel] after the gig, Liam threw all the plastic furniture in the pool. Noel looked at him and said, ‘where are we going to sit?’ And he made him get in the pool and get all the furniture out. So there were like attempts at being rock and roll, and not quite getting it right sometimes.”

Cummins says he has “very affectionate” memories of working with Oasis. “I’ve got a lot of very sensitive looking pictures of Liam and people are really surprised when they see them,” he says. “But he is a very sensitive lad… it’s just he was irritating because he was younger and he wanted to make himself heard.”

Getting ready for the reunion

All three photographers have yet to see the reunion show, but all have tickets. All say the announcement last summer came as a surprise.

“There was an inkling of it, I suppose, just in the thawing of the comments between the brothers, but I still wouldn’t have guessed it,” says Furmanovsky, who has a book out later this year, and whose pictures feature in the programme. “It’s wonderful they have pulled it off with such conviction and passion.”

Cummins’ work can be seen in a free outdoor exhibition at Wembley Park, which fans will be able to see throughout the summer until the final gigs there in September.

“I think the atmosphere at the gigs seems to have been really friendly… I like the idea that people are taking their kids and they’re passing the baton on a little bit,” he says. “Everyone’s just having a blast and it’s like the event of the summer – definitely something we need at the moment.”

Spencer Jones, who released his second Oasis book, Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, for the album’s 30th anniversary last year – adds: “They really seem to be capturing a new generation of fans and I don’t think a band has ever done that [to this extent] before. Bands from 20, 30 years ago normally just take their traditional fanbase with them.”

But he says his first thought when the reunion was announced was for the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy. “I think for any parent, to have two children who don’t talk is pretty tough,” he says. “It’s that notion of reconciliation – if they can do it, anyone can do it.

“The fact they’re walking on stage, hands clasped together, there’s a huge amount of symbolism there that transcends Oasis and music. Especially in a fractured society, that unity is inspiring. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough time since COVID, battle weary with life itself. I think people generally are just gagging to have some fun.”

Brothers: Liam And Noel Through The Lens Of Kevin Cummins is on at Wembley Park until 30 September. Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, by Michael Spencer Jones, available through Spellbound Galleries, is out now. Oasis: Trying To Find A Way Out Of Nowhere, by Jill Furmanovsky and edited by Noel Gallagher, published by Thames & Hudson, is out from 23 September.