A fair cop: TV star's in love with Badenoch
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
COP this – Laurence Fox wants to work for the Strathy.
As he relaxed in Aviemore, one of TV's favourite detectives admitted: "You've gotta have the best office in the world.
"As I drove through Kingussie today I saw it and I thought – that is exactly where I want to work. "I want to stay forever in Bardenoosh. Bondernock... how do you say it? Anyway, it's the best place in the world and I really love it. No, I really do!"
After graciously buying us back a pint on Thursday, ITV's charismatic Lewis side-kick thanked us for getting it wrong.
"In last week's paper you said I would be singing here on Friday. If that kept tonight's audience to a nicely intimate number tonight then I'm grateful to you, even if this lovely hostelry might not be..."
He raised a glass to the ever-popular Old Bridge Inn and confessed: "At Glastonbury I played to 5,000 and it was just a little bit edgy. You have to remember I'm new at this.
"It's a learning curve for me – now be honest, my set tonight was pretty shocking, wasn't it?"
In all honesty, it was more surprising than shocking.
Some in the modest audience knew what to expect, since they had heard his album, but most in the room did not have a clue what the tall, torn-jeaned 35-year-old actor would pull out of his guitar case.
He has spent 20 years developing his compositional skills, so that he could get his darkest and dearest thoughts out.
Fox said that since his mid-teens he had known he needed to write songs about himself, his loves, his hates, his frustrations, his feelings and the real world.
"But I've only been doing this side of it for a year," he explained. "I have a long, long way to go but I am going to go there. I love acting and I have plenty of work lined up, but I really need this.
"I want people to hear the songs and all this, the recording, this tour, the gigs, the open road in my borrowed Morgan, it's all a balance, and it's absolutely fantastic because it is not acting.
"Take tonight – I'm in a bunkhouse, right? For company I have four empty bunks. Now, if I were acting do you think I'd put up with that? I'd kick off!
"Believe me, I'd really kick off, but here it's wonderful, it's real and I'm free and I'm going to go on with it until I'm very good at it."
And he added: "If you write all this up, could you please make it less of the Hathaway and more of the Laurence?"
We promised we'd hardly mention Lewis at all.
But in our innocence we asked where his next gig was. "Stornoway" he said...
