Ex-Marillion frontman Fish nets film role

HE has played the "baddie" in Taggart and Rebus and showed his dark side in films including The Jacket.

Now rocker Fish – real name Derek Dick – has signed up to play the comic book supervillian in local film Electric Man.

It is the first project for the former Marillion frontman, who lives in Haddington, in more than a year – after the singer and actor was finally given the nod by doctors to get back to work following a painful throat operation six months ago.

He said: "I've had to rest since getting a cyst on my vocal chords, but I've now been given the green light and this seems like a good project to get involved in.

"I got a letter a couple of weeks ago from the writers asking if I wanted to play the role of Jimmy and I thought 'why not'? My recovery was good timing, and the script was very good.

"As I've got my own independent record label and it's going to be filmed locally, it's definitely appealing to me. I'm looking forward to working with such a decent production team. I've done a lot of music over the years but not a lot of films."

The low-budget feature length movie, which is looking to attract around 25,000 in donations to get the project off the ground, is set to start filming in September.

It follows a couple of comic book store owners – Jazz and Wolf – who find a rare 100,000 copy of Electric Man and are chased by Jimmy, who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the valuable read.

Many of the scenes will be shot in Deadhead Comics, on Candlemaker Row, after working hours and the rest of the film will be filmed across the Capital.

Fish has already attended a fundraising event with writers David Barras and Scott Mackay for potential investors. Currently the team have raised more than 6,000, but more is set to enter the pot in forthcoming weeks.

Mr Barras said: "We'd seen Fish in other acting roles and thought he'd really suit the part of Jimmy, who is a Glaswegian heavy.

"We're currently trawling through footage from a further 77 auditionees, including videos from New York and London. We'll be inviting ten to 15 people back for a second round of auditions, to make sure we find characters with the right chemistry, and we'll be announcing the rest of the cast in forthcoming weeks.

"We're hoping Electric Man will be as successful as other low- budget films, such as Paranormal Activity. It only took 10,000 to make and made over 100 million at the box office. It would be great if a local film could have the same success."

In addition to his filming duties, Fish is also starting to write songs for a 14th album and has began penning his "warts and all" autobiography. Over the summer he is set to make several festival appearances and perform a number of gigs across Europe.

He said: "It sounds like a lot but I'm not nervous. I'm all better now and I've always been a busy man. I'm looking forward to getting back on the horse after all this rest."