Worth the wait

IT'S 1981 and Gene Hunt – everyone's favourite unreconstructed man – is engaged in a battle of ideologies with an attractive woman and he's losing. He addresses her as "Bollinger Knickers". He gropes her left breast. And when he grunts "Fandabidosi" it's obvious that the only real winners here are The Krankies, propelled by that name-check on to their loftiest perch in popular culture.

Flash forward to 2008 and Phil Glenister, who played Hunt in BBC1's Life On Mars and does so again in Ashes To Ashes, is trying to remember who he was in 1981 and whether there was a role in his young life for the opposite sex.

"I was 18 and I had spots," he says. "My friends had all had them but I've always been a late developer. I spent a long time in front of the mirror bursting zits. I forked out a lot of money on Rimmel. So girls? No, they didn't figure. And they would have had to have lain on the bed naked shouting 'F**k me!' before the penny dropped."

Scars from all that plook-popping 27 years ago can still be glimpsed in Glenister's rugged complexion as he glugs wine and munches crisps in his publicist's office in Soho. This will be Gene Hunt's only nod to his alter ego all day.

Ashes To Ashes repeats the formula of Life On Mars, with a contemporary cop whooshed back in time to combat crime in uneasy partnership with the bold Gene. For 1973, read 1981. For John Simm, read Keeley Hawes ("Bollinger Knickers"). For Salford, read London. And after declaring last time out that "There will never be a woman prime minister as long as I have a hole in my arse," Hunt must now acknowledge the presence of Margaret Thatcher – "the Great 'andbag herself."

But can Ashes To Ashes repeat the earlier show's amazing success? Glenister admits he was nervous about a spin-off. "At first my instinct was to say no. I thought we should quit while we were ahead. John didn't want to do another show; you can only stay in a coma (the plot device for his time-travelling] for so long. But the producers thought there was more mileage in Gene.

"I said: 'Ok, let's have a long lunch and talk about it.' They said they were trying to get someone of the calibre of Keeley involved. I was like: 'If you can get her, let's do it.'"

This is typical Glenister, deferring to others and playing down his contribution. He does it again later when he says it was right and proper that only Simm was Bafta-nomininated because his co-star carried Life On Mars while he got the "showy stuff, the good one-liners". But it's the one-liners we remember and it's Hunt we love. Men love him (obviously) but so do women. Often shot from below, he looks 10ft tall. In Orson Welles' film Touch Of Evil, Welles gave the impression of being 10ft wide, but Marlene Dietrich's pay-off in his direction could easily be applied to Hunt: "He was some kind of a man."

Predictably, Glenister winces at being mentioned in the same breath as a movie legend and selects imagery of an altogether more mundane kind. "I've said before that Gene's appeal is a kind of reaction to the nanny state and all the bloody rules we have now, but I think women like him because of his lack of self-awareness in what is a very image-conscious age.

"I was watching Rick Stein (the TV chef] the other day and he was visiting this carrot farm in Lincolnshire. He plucked this ugly-shaped thing out of the ground and told us to forget all about looks because the taste was what mattered. That got me thinking about supermarkets and the seductive packaging for their veg which has absolutely no bobbly bits and how the stuff sprawls out on the shelf going: 'Buy me, buy me.'"

At this point Glenister stops, as if he doesn't know where to take his story. But it's headed in the right direction. Too many actors on TV look the same. They have regulation-sized jawlines and standard-issue lips, for pouting in a too-pretty way. It's a safe bet that at no time – he'll be 45 on February 10, three days after Ashes To Ashes begins – has Glenister ever pouted.

He has trouble spinning a yarn, which might seem odd for an actor, but if you've heard enough of them do this it's actually very endearing. He doesn't over-cook his anecdotes and, despite being steeped in TV, has next to nothing of the luvvy about him. And the modesty does not seem false when he says: "Whenever I'm offered a part I immediately think of five blokes who could do it better."

Late for pimples and late for sexual awakening, London-born Glenister is experiencing fame late as well. His elder brother Robert got off to a better start as an actor by attending a grammar school while he was comprehensive-educated.

Glenister was definitely interested in the business but thought he was more likely to follow in the footsteps of his father John, who was a TV cameraman before moving into directing with classic series such as The Six Wives Of Henry VIII and bestowed on the young Phil birthday treats of outings to TV Centre so he could gawp in wonder at Edward Fox and Anthony Valentine on the set of Colditz drinking tea while still in Nazi uniform.

Back to 1981 again, then – where was he headed? "Christ knows. I'd just left sixth-form college but I had no plan and no money, I was drifting." Was he politically minded? "Only naively. I remember arguing with a mate whose big brother had gone to fight in the Falklands. What an immature prat!" And what did he look like in '81? "Oh f****n' hell! Duran Duran flying jacket, neckerchief, black pixie boots and these horrible tight stretch jeans – with pinstripes."

Did the success of his father and brother intimidate him? "No, Robert and I have never been competitive and we're very proud of each other. And Dad only ever gave me great advice."

In 15 years of acting, Glenister never had to resort to bar work to help pay the bills. But despite turns in acclaimed dramas such as Vanity Fair and Clocking Off, he would find himself remembered for "three lines in The Bill in 1992". That's all changed thanks to Gene Hunt.

They're making an American version of Life Of Mars but Glenister says he's "too knackered" to contemplate Hollywood because he's a late dad (what else?) as well. His wife is the actress Beth Goddard.

In the past, Glenister has slagged off his old school. Before now, he has slagged off the BBC, soaps and actors who brag they can't get out the front door for the mound of work offers; the profession simply wasn't like that. He adopts a softer approach today with only CGI deemed worthy of scorn. "Saying that, the next thing I do (The Last Van Helsing for ITV, playing a vampire-slayer] is going to be CGI-heavy, ha ha."

Glenister hesitates to say he's finally made it. He walks out of his house without having to wade through scripts; the profession still isn't like that. But there's a billboard next to his local supermarket with his mug plastered across it and you guess for his daughters, Milly and Charlotte, that this could be as formative as those jackbooted Gestapo impersonators were for their old man.

For the rest of us, there's a choice. The big stores with their super-smooth vegetables, another kind of master race – or Gene Hunt, gloriously pock-marked and infinitely more interesting.

He was some kind of a retro cop. He was some kind of a bobbly carrot.v

Ashes To Ashes starts on BBC1 on February 7, 9pm