The traffic police officer

Shields visited one of the M25's traffic control centres

Andy Shields explains how he portrayed traffic police Inspector Clive Turner in The Day Britain Stopped, without resorting to cliché.

And he reveals the secrets of developing the character's personality.

The programme makers arranged for me to visit the traffic control room in Godstone, Surrey, as part of my research, where we returned later to film several sequences.

I seem to have played a lot of policemen in my acting career; I even appeared in another gridlock project a while ago. So I had already done a lot of research that was relevant to this programme, which was handy.

However experienced, they're still surprised at the stupidity of some motorists

Andy Shields

When we were in Godstone, the atmosphere in the control room was very relaxed. There were a lot of officers working there who had been in the force for a long time and for them it was not just a job - it was a way of life.

It was a well-oiled machine but with a cosy club atmosphere. Though they recognise the seriousness of their role, officers allow themselves the occasional laugh at what drivers can get up to out on the M25. However experienced, they're still surprised at the stupidity of some motorists.

Events plausible

They had a lot of knowledge about crash scenarios and they thought the events that take place in the programme were very plausible. They obviously see a lot of death in their job, but they are very professional about it. The only exceptions are when children are involved.

The officer in charge on the day I visited happened to have once worked with my uncle in a fire station so we got on very well. I didn't want to do a carbon copy of him, but I observed his mannerisms - how he laughed, what he laughed at, the way he folded his arms when he came to a punch line.

As it turned out he reminded me of a good friend of mine so I was able to observe this friend afterwards to get into the character more.

The temptation when playing police officers is to come out with all the old clichés

Andy Shields

I like to find out things that are not even relevant to the script - like the character's favourite colour, what they had for lunch and what their favourite film is.

If I can get this information into the back of my head then things don't throw you and you can believe in what you are saying.

The temptation when playing police officers is to come out with all the old clichés, but they all acted very naturally, and that's what I wanted to portray. It's more realistic.

The producers wanted to capture a fly-on-the-wall documentary style so even though I was allowed to read a script, the interview scenes themselves were improvised around a specific scenario.

I did a lot of this when I trained to be an actor 20 years ago so I am comfortable with improvisation as my training was very much against learning lines parrot fashion. The philosophy is that the more you know your character then the better the lines will flow.

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The Day Britain Stopped was broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday, 13 May, 2003 at 2100 BST.

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