TREVOR'S UP TO HIS NECK IN MUCK & BULLETS

Trevor Eve is sinking into thick, clammy mud. He's lying in the shallows of the river Tyne in Newcastle, keenly aware that he's about as far removed as he can be from the glitzy, glamorous side of showbiz. And, just when he doesn't think it can get any worse, one of the production assistants on his new two-part (ITV) drama Lawless, rushes forward and chucks water in his face. Is trevor suffering some kind of sadistic punishment from the director? No, this is merely one of te rather less than pleasant scenes that, from time to time, even big TV stars like Trevor have to endure. He's avoided the bit where his character has to jump of a bridge, before being carried downstream - a stuntman's been brought in to do that. But there's no escaping the next scene - the clos-up in the mire just has to be Trevor himself. 'It wasn't an enjoyable experience,' winces the Waking the Dead star, now sitting in his palatial on-set caravan, having showered in hot, soapy water and made himself a mug of hot coffee. 'Not only was it cold, wet and unpleasant, I later discovered that the banks of the Tyne, near to wherewe were filming, is where the heroin junkies chuck away their used needles. Nice, eh? 'Mind you, I fared better than the stuntman. The poor guy had his mouth open as he jumped in, and he came up gagging!'The river scene may not have been a highlight in Trevor's long and successful TV career but it's one of the most important in Lawless, which sees the 53-year old playing DI John Paxton, a dedicated copper who ends up on the run accused of murdering his boss. 'I have enormous sympathy for Paxton,' says Trevor. 'here's a guy who just wants to steer a clear path through to retirement. Instead, he's in the frame for the death of his senior officer, DCI Pete Chambers (David Calder). Paxton is forced to leave his wife and young family to embark on a dangerous quest for the truth. He becomes a fugitive from the very system that he once sought to uphold.' The story starts when a known criminal, Sean Kinney (Michael Hodgson), kills another policeman and a young girl. But when Kinney comes to court, the case against him collapses on a technicality. Paxton's team is enraged and hatch a drunken plot to see that justice is done by drowning Kinney in his bath. Paxton and a colleague, DC Liz Bird (Orla Brady), refuse to get involved and later, when Paxton arranges to meet Pete Chambers, he finds the DCI dead. Realising he has been set up, Paxton panics and goes on the run. Happily for Trevor, most of his scenes in the drama take place in more comfortable surroundings than a muddy riverbank - for instance, fast cars. 'I zoomed around the streets of Newcastle in a couple of all-action chases.' he says. 'They wre great fun. Not only did I get to do my own wheelspins, but there wasn't any dialogue to learn!' The idead of trevor doing anything even remotely daredevellish would have been out of the question a few years ago. he broke his back while playing polo in 1995 and was fortunate not to be paralysed for life. 'I was lucky - although I never lost sight of my limitations,' he says. 'I actually went back to playing polo six months later, but did it just the once. It didn't make any sense to risk another accident. I might not have been so fortunate a second time.' Trevor now confines himself to sports on terra firma, in order to stay in trim. He has a personal trainer who regularly puts him through gruelling 45- minute runs. he also plays tennis and golf. With all that exercise, it's little wonder he's retained the good looks that have won him an army of female idmirers over the years. trevor looks part surprised and part chuffed when I mention how many women of my acquaintance would like to jump off a bridge with him - and quite possibly writhe alongside him in the river Tyne mud. 'My kids would be on the floor laughing if they heard their dad being described as a sex symbol. They'd regard it as quite a ridiculous concept. But, of course, I'm enormously flattered that anyone - and I mean anyone - still finds me attractive!'

TREVOR EVE FACT FILE

Status:
Married to actress Sharon Maughan (Holby City)

Children:
Three - Alice, 22, Jack, 18, and George, 10

First role:

Trevor's first screen part was in the 1976 short film, Children, in which he played a character called Man in Shower.

Breakthrough:

Radio presenter-cum-private eye Eddie Shoestring in the 1979 TV series. Despite lasting only two seasons (because Trevor was anxious to return to theatre work), the drama was an instant classic. When Trevor left, creator Robert Banks Stewart used future story ideas for his next big series, Bergerac.

Three other great TV roles:

Philandering writer Felix Cramer in 1990's A Sense of Guilt; philandering Cabinet Minister Duncan Matlock in 1995's The Politician's Wife and a too-busy-to-philander detective, Peter Boyd, in the present-day Waking the Dead.

A few other things:

Trevor appeared as Velior alongside Brad Pitt in the recent movie blockbuster, Troy; has been the producer pf adaptions of Cinderella (2000) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998) and studied architecture at Kingston Polytechnic in Surrey before enrolling at RADA (The Royal Acadamy of Dramatic Art).

By Tim Oglethorpe for the TV Times, November 2004