Shane Meadows: Prison might have led to better stories – or maybe I’d have ended up a really pathetic criminal
While This Is England director Shane Meadows is best known as one of the most unique voices working in British cinema, he has told Sky News he could easily have made a different name for himself had things been different when he was given a suspended sentence for stealing in his youth.
“I think worst criminal in history may have been on the agenda,” he joked, recalling how court clerks laughed when they heard details of how he’d been caught “stealing a breast pump, some chicken tikka sandwiches and a raspberry crush”.
He just “happened to spot the pump” and grabbed it, knowing a neighbour needed one – but insists he wasn’t being “Robin Hood” and was mostly “just hungry”.
“Who knows, maybe I’d have got better stories?” Meadows muses on what might have happened had he been sent to prison. “Or maybe I’d have ended up being a really pathetic criminal.”
After dropping out of school in his teens, had he not got into making short films on a borrowed camcorder, life could have been radically different.
Thankfully, Meadows was only given a suspended sentence, months before he made Small Time – a short film that was enough to convince investors to fund his first full-length movie.
Now, as he prepares for the cinematic re-release of his 2004 thriller Dead Man’s Shoes, the filmmaker is in a reflective mood. The film was originally released two years before he found fame with This Is England, the critically acclaimed film which would go on to spawn three spin-off TV series.
“It didn’t make a splash at all,” Meadows admits of Dead Man’s Shoes. “And then, I don’t know whether it was mates passing it around on VHS or DVD, it just became one of those films that people wouldn’t let go of and kind of discovered in a different way.”
‘It’s nice to see it through their eyes’
Paddy Considine stars in Meadows’ 2004 film Dead Man’s Shoes. Pic: Warp/Big Arty Prods/Kobal/Shutterstock
Starring Meadows’ long-term collaborator Paddy Considine, the thriller sees a soldier return home to take revenge on a group of drug dealers who abused his younger brother.
While you’ll find many of the same faces appear throughout his work, the Nottingham-based film director says casting at least one unknown on each project is essential.
“It makes everyone else stop being mardy. You know, someone comes in and they can’t believe they’ve been picked up in a car, they can’t believe the dinner is free, they can’t believe someone is saying, ‘do you want a tea?’ And then the rest of us kind of go, ‘mine’s freezing!’ You know, it’s like, they kind of bring you back down to earth and it’s nice to see it through their eyes.”
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Meadows is often compared to Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, but in reality remains a unique voice in film. His dramas are generally set and shot in the Midlands and his heavily improvised style has turned many of the unknowns he has cast into stars, such as Line Of Duty’s Vicky McClure and Brassic’s Joe Gilgun.
While he’s covered the impact of the Thatcher era on working-class communities, there’s plenty about the world we live in now that’s also caught Meadows’ focus.
‘Kids don’t feel there’s many options around’
“In the area where I’m in, in Nottingham, since COVID, kids have really changed,” he says. “There’s a saying, an African saying, which is: ‘A child who isn’t embraced by his village will burn the village to feel its warmth.’ And that, I think, is very prevalent at the moment because there’s lots and lots of kids who are spilling on to the street, children coming out of COVID, who’ve been trapped inside, not feeling like there are many options around. I think a phrase like that seems pretty apt.”
Meadows’ ability to read the temperature of the areas of England which don’t often make it on screen is, of course, part of the reason his films have, over the last two decades, come to be appreciated all the more.
Dead Man’s Shoes is out in cinemas from 15 September as well as being screened as part of the BFI’s Acting Hard season, which runs until 2 October
A drill rapper turned TikTok wildlife presenter hopes to “bridge the gap” between young people and climate change.
Growing up in Ladbroke Grove, west London, former music star TY was stabbed four times. He had fallen “into nonsense”, he says, but he always wanted something different for his life.
Wildlife and the environment are his real passions. Nowadays, you are more likely to see TY with a boa constrictor clamping on to his arm in the Amazon, or letting a tarantula crawl across his hands.
He tells Sky News he wants to help people “understand the severity of the planet right now”, but the route to his new calling hasn’t exactly been a straightforward path.
“I never had purpose,” the rapper explains. “Three or four years ago, I would not have seen myself in this light… As I fell into wildlife, I found myself again.”
Sky News’ Katie Spencer braves holding a snake
Collaborations with US wildlife enthusiast Garrett Galvin – aka fishingarrett, one of the biggest wildlife content creators in the world – have certainly helped when it comes to amassing a growing following on social media as TYfromtheWyld.
But TY already had a substantial number of fans from his days as a platinum-selling drill rapper, having found fame as a member of the pioneering rap collective CGM (formerly known as 1011).
Alongside rapper Digga D, he made headlines when police caught the pair and three others in possession of machetes and baseball bats in 2017.
They ended up being given one of the UK’s very first music criminal behaviour orders, with the police arguing their songs incited violence – a move which triggered a debate about art censorship.
‘I never saw anyone that looked and thought like me’
“It’s a rough area, Ladbroke Grove, where I’m from,” says TY. “Crime started happening, I started getting into nonsense on the roads and as a young kid growing up you can get easily influenced by some stuff, so I kind of was lost for a while.
“Music was never my passion, I just fell into it. I grew up watching [TV naturalists and conservationists] Steve Backshall, Steve Irwin, but that world was so distant for me. I never saw anyone that looked and thought like me.
“Now I want to represent and be an inspiration for young people.”
Pic: @tyfromthewyld
Rapper AJ Tracey, who grew up in the same area of London as TY, says people need to understand that it’s all too easy to drift down the wrong path.
“What a lot of people don’t realise is that people aren’t choosing to be in the situation that they are… anyone who wants to change their life and do something positive 100% deserves a second chance, honestly, probably even a third or fourth chance, because we’re all humans and we make mistakes.”
Just don’t expect Tracey to be making an appearance in any of TY’s videos anytime soon.
“He’s with some dangerous animals,” he laughs. “I don’t know about that, I’m scared!”
Pic: @tyfromthewyld
On a more serious note, Tracey says successive British governments could learn from TY’s skills at engaging with young people.
“I feel like when the country’s making budget cuts, it’s the youth that miss out all the time… the people in power have got to really pull some things together.”
While there might not seem an obvious crossover between drill music and learning about the ecosystem, TY’s success clearly demonstrates that an audience is there.
“We’re not doing enough to help,” he says. “This is my mission, to save animals, save the world, and get as many people on board as I can.
“Maybe a guy like me, from a certain background, will just kick a lot of people up to just say, ‘Yo. He’s doing something’.”
Entertainment
Gene Hackman’s wife died from rare infectious disease around a week before actor’s death, medical investigator says
Gene Hackman’s wife died from a rare infectious disease around a week before the actor died, medical investigators have said.
The couple were found dead in their New Mexico home on 26 February, along with one of their pet dogs. Police have previously said there were no apparent signs of foul play.
At a press conference on Friday, chief medical investigator for New Mexico, doctor Heather Jarrell, gave an update on the results of post-mortem investigations carried out following their deaths.
Doctor Jarrell said Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare infectious disease. There were no signs of trauma and the death was a result of natural causes, she said.
Actor Gene Hackman with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, pictured in 2003. Pic: AP
The doctor said Arakawa likely died on 11 February, the date she was last known to have communicated with people via email.
She said Hackman had advanced Alzheimer’s and died from heart disease, with data from his pacemaker last registering on 18 February.
Due to his Alzheimer’s, “it’s quite possible he was not aware that [his wife] was deceased,” Dr Jarrell added.
The actor tested negative for hantavirus, a rare disease spread by infected rodent droppings.
Gene Hackman in 1999. Pic: AP
Humans can contract hantavirus by breathing in contaminated air, and symptoms can start as soon as one week, or as long as eight weeks, later. It is not transmissible from person to person.
There were just seven confirmed cases of hantavirus in New Mexico last year, and Arakawa is the only person confirmed to have contracted it in the state in 2025. Between 1975 and 2023, New Mexico recorded a total of 129 hantavirus cases, with 52 deaths.
Santa Fe County sheriff Adan Mendoza said authorities are still waiting for data from mobile phones found at the property, but it is “very unlikely they are going to show anything else”.
“There’s no indication” that Hackman used a mobile phone or any other technology to communicate and the couple lived a very private life before their deaths, he added.
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Bill Murray’s tribute to Gene Hackman
The cause of the couple’s dog’s death has not been confirmed but it is now known that Arakawa had picked the animal up from the vet, where it had undergone a procedure, on 9 February.
The procedure “may explain why [the dog] was in a crate at the residence” while two surviving dogs were found roaming the property, Mr Mendoza said.
Hackman, who was widely respected as one of the greatest actors of his generation, was a five-time Oscar nominee who won the best actor in a leading role for The French Connection in 1972 and best actor in a supporting role for Unforgiven two decades later.
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Morgan Freeman paying tribute to Gene Hackman at the Oscars. Pic: AP/Chris Pizzello
At last Sunday’s Academy Awards, Morgan Freeman paid tribute to Hackman. “A community lost a giant and I lost a dear friend,” he said.
He met Arakawa, a concert pianist, in the mid-1980s and the pair married in 1991.
Brian James, founding member of The Damned, has died aged 70.
The guitarist, who was part of the group’s original line-up, wrote the first UK punk single New Rose and helped the band create their debut album, 1977’s Damned Damned Damned.
A spokesperson for record label Easy Action said: “I can confirm that Brian passed away peacefully yesterday with his family present.”
The Damned in 1978. Pic: Sheila Rock/Shutterstock
James’ fellow band member, bassist Raymond “Captain Sensible” Burns, said in an Instagram post: “The riffmeister, Brian has gone – that final act that happens to us all, for most is a sad and miserable affair but while it’s truly awful our mate has been taken I prefer to celebrate the life… and what a life Brian James had.”
He added: “And looking back I have to say what an absolute gent Brian was… despite having to occasionally endure some pretty appalling behaviour by yours truly he never once lost it with me – and whenever we met over the following decades we would have a drink and a bloody good laugh.”
A statement on James’ Facebook page said he was “one of the true pioneers of music, guitarist, songwriter, and true gentleman” and a musician who was “incessantly creative and a musical tour de force” over his long career.
It said: “With his wife Minna, son Charlie, and daughter-in-law Alicia by his side, Brian passed peacefully on Thursday 6 March 2025.”
The Damned supported the Sex Pistols on their Anarchy Tour of the UK and went on to play with T Rex on Marc Bolan’s final tour before he died.
James left the band after it released its second album, Music For Pleasure, and was part of the short-lived Tanz Der Youth before he formed The Lords Of The New Church with American singer Stiv Bators and drummer Nick Turner.
The band released the songs Open Your Eyes, Dance With Me and Method To My Madness.
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James went on to work with The Dripping Lips, create his own band the Brian James Gang, and release solo albums.
In 2020 he and The Damned lead singer Dave Vanian, drummer Christopher “Rat Scabies” Millar and Burns announced the band would reform more than four decades after it began in 1976.
James performed with the group in 2022.
Burns said: “When BJ, Rat, DV and myself got back together for The Damned originals shows it was magical in all sorts of ways… that we were chums again of course but also the way we managed to recreate our ’76 garage punk sound right from the first chord in rehearsals.
“We were all up for doing it again too… but that’ll never happen now, sadly.”
The band’s set in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday would be dedicated to James, he added, “without whom The Damned would never ever have happened”.
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