'Oh bugger, I better shoogle again' - Sharon Small on Nightsleeper

Centring around a cyber-attack on the UK rail network, key scenes were filmed at a purpose-built studio set using three life-sized carriages.

While clever technology was employed to create the illusion of towns and countryside flickering past the train windows, the cast had their work cut out when it came to what Small hilariously describes as perfecting their “signature shoogles”.

What did that entail exactly? “The hardest bit probably, because the train wasn’t moving, was we had to all be mindful of keeping the train moving,” she says. “Every time we would do a scene, the first [assistant director] would be shouting, ‘We are going at 90mph!’ “Because mentally you would kind of forget and then think, ‘Oh bugger, I better shoogle again.’ We all had our own signature shoogles, so hopefully they work together.”

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Glasgow-born Small, who spent her early childhood in Clydebank before moving to Kinghorn, Fife, is now based in London. She regularly travelled back and forth to Scotland by train while filming Nightsleeper last year, using every available opportunity to nail that “signature shoogle”.

“I was observing myself going up and down the carriages if I went to the canteen,” she says. “I thought, ‘I really do get thrown about. I’m a bit rubbish.’ There are people who can just walk through, but I was hitting off the corners of all the chairs. That is my signature shoogle.”

Nightsleeper, which was shot primarily in Glasgow, began airing on BBC One last Sunday and will continue its six-episode run over the coming fortnight.

Alexandra Roach and Joe Cole lead the cast of the suspense-packed drama, which also features a strong ensemble of Scottish acting talent, including Small alongside Alex Ferns, James Cosmo, Lois Chimimba, Katie Leung, Sharon Rooney and Daniel Cahill.

Small, 57, plays the fictional Minister for Transport Liz Draycott. The reason we’re publishing this interview at the midway point of the series is to avoid spoiling her grand entrance into the unfolding chaos (if you haven’t watched episode one, skip past the next few paragraphs).

As the action progresses viewers soon realise, in a delicious twist, that the beleaguered politician is actually on board the sleeper train as it departs Motherwell sans driver and under the control of shadowy cyberhackers.

When it comes to optics, a major issue on the rail network isn’t a good look for the image-conscious Liz Draycott, which all adds to what Small describes as “the irony” and “slightly comedic value” that she is stuck on the train.

Nightsleeper is set on the sleeper train from Glasgow (Image: free)

“She is somebody who has messed up a bit on Twitter in the past and gone a bit viral,” says Small. “She is not always the most diplomatic of MPs or people. She is doing a bit of self-protection and doesn’t want to open herself up to more of that ridicule.”

In short, Draycott is a polarising figure that everybody loves to hate? “I think that is generally the premise,” confirms Small. “Also, I’m playing, because it was shot last summer before the General Election, a Tory MP.

“There are slight shadows probably of Liz Truss in there, somebody who can perhaps be a little blind to other people’s opinions.

“My first question to the director was literally a whisper. I said, ‘Wait, am I a Tory?’ He went, ‘You are.’ And I was like, ‘Ohhhh, OK …’ because I’m a very strong left-winger. Scottish people are much more socialist generally, aren’t they?”

That is certainly often the case in many of the once-thriving areas of former mining and industry, like Fife, where Small spent much of her formative years.

“I was brought up near the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank until I was seven,” she adds. “I have always been in that working-class mindset and [grew up] in council housing. That 1980s mindset of dog-eat-dog wasn’t really part of our way.”

With Nightsleeper, Small was delighted to not only be back filming on home turf but also to be working alongside so many other well-known Scottish names. Had she crossed paths with any of her castmates on past jobs?

“James Cosmo, I have worked with quite a few times,” she says. “He has been my dad, he’s been a pal, he has been my dad in something else and this time he was a fellow passenger. It is always nice to see him. He is a really gorgeous man.”

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Did the cast get much chance to hang out away from work? “We went out and had cocktails, some dinners,” says Small. “It was quite a sociable cast. That was fun.

“I have family up there, so I spent time catching up with my nephew and new wee niece. That was lovely. I love going back [to Scotland] and it seems it is only work that takes me back now. I really enjoyed hanging around Glasgow.”

This last sentence is laden with poignant undertones. The eldest of five children, Small comes from a close-knit, single-parent family. She and her siblings were brought up by their late mother Sandy, who passed away in 2021.

“In fact, three years just a couple of days ago,” says Small, when we speak over Zoom in August. “Kinghorn is now not a base for us anymore because my mum is not there any longer and we have all scattered a bit.

“I still have some family in Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, my brother in Glasgow. When I get up, we go visit the wee spot that is in the cemetery for my mum. I went to high school in Kirkcaldy, but I don’t really have a connection to those places.

“My mum’s place was definitely the base we used to go to. She had a wee council house by the seaside. It was a lovely place for us all to meet up. It is hard when you lose a parent like that and have to suddenly redefine who you are as a family.”

It has been a tough transition. Small acknowledges that having geographic distance from the familiar places where she grew up has provided some solace during the difficult grieving period.

“I don’t have to look at her little house being taken over by someone else because I don’t have to see that every day,” she says. “It was an easy hub for us. I don’t think we have found our full hub again since.”

Having spent part of her childhood in Clydebank, before her family upped sticks to Kinghorn, Small feels a strong affinity with the west of Scotland and east coast alike.

“It’s interesting because people don’t understand why, when they ask where I’m from, I say both sides,” she says. “They don’t understand why I make that distinction.

“The first question when I was a kid in Clydebank was, ‘Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?’ because that was the way you were defined completely as a child. Then going to Fife, that question was never asked again, ever.

James Cosmo in Nightsleeper. Small calls him a 'gorgeous man' (Image: free)“Not that it was all religious in Clydebank, but it was a different mindset. Then I was living in Kinghorn by the sea. It was all just about going down to the beach and having beach parties and seeing if there were boys who had come on holiday during the Glasgow or Edinburgh fairs. It was more sedate and sleepier.”

By her mid-teens, Small had strong aspirations to pursue a career in acting. She adored life in Kinghorn but also dreamed of adventures far beyond what it could offer.

Small nods in agreement with this. “It was a different time then,” she says. “It was the mid-1980s when we didn’t have any of the globalisation and insight that we have today in terms of what is on the internet. It felt very cut off then.

“I felt like there was more to explore. And yes, I wanted to do all the jobs. I thought, ‘Well, there is only one way of doing all the jobs and that is to pretend.’”

It is 30 years since she made her TV debut in Taggart back in 1994. The gritty Glasgow cop drama was a rite of passage for many a Scottish actor and Small has fond memories of her time working on it.

She played a woman who discovers her husband isn’t the father of their child after an IVF mix-up. The police get involved after it emerges the doctor at the centre of the scandal has deliberately swapped the sperm of would-be fathers for his own during the insemination process.

“It was based on a true story,” she says. “I think we might have been the first who told that story. I know it has been told quite a few times since.”

We saw a reboot of detective series Rebus air on BBC earlier this year and there has been a lot of whispers about the potential to reprise Taggart too. What are her thoughts on that?

“You are winning because you have already got the headline in a sense,” muses Small. “You have a brand you can resell. Ultimately, if it was set up with the right person, yeah, of course you can.

“You can tell Glasgow stories. Taggart did really well in encompassing all the aspects of Glasgow. It went into the affluent and the darker side. You can always reboot something. And I have had lots of practice playing cops, so I would love to be put up for it.”

Taggart, with James MacPherson, Blythe Duff, and Mark McManus. It encompassed all aspects of Glasgow life, says Small (Image: STV)

Funny you should say that, Sharon. Among the ideas mooted is to revive Taggart with a woman in the titular role, with one suggestion that this could be the daughter of the character played by the late Mark McManus, who has followed in her father’s footsteps as a police detective.

Let’s start a campaign: Sharon Small for Taggart. She laughs heartily. “Bring it on. I like your suggestion. I could look like her, sort of, right?”

We return to chatting about Nightsleeper. The series was created and written by Nick Leather, who has previously won a Bafta for true-crime drama Murdered For Being Different.

“Honestly, I thought the premise was brilliant,” says Small. “The writing was so well crafted. It’s funny. The characters are all really different. It was ambitious and I thought, ‘This is great fun.’ And who doesn’t want to be in a heist or hijack drama?”

Around this stage of the interview, my dog decides to sigh loudly in the background. Small kindly asks if there is a baby or small child trying to get my attention. Red-faced, I have to say, nope, just a bored Border Collie, while offering my profuse apologies.

Sadly, this isn’t the only disgruntled utterance from the misbehaving Moose but Small is a good sport, taking it all in her stride and even inviting him to pop up and say hello over Zoom. She is genuinely lovely, even if I’m dying with embarrassment at the indignity of it all.

“I’ve had to shut my cat out because he’s like ‘miaow, miaow …’” she says at one point, doing a splendid impersonation of the plaintive caterwauls from the moggy in question.

Small is the kind of person who is both interesting and interested. She is endlessly fascinated by the human condition and particularly enjoys telling the stories of women from all walks of life.

She speaks at length about her recent role as Jennie Lee in the National Theatre production of Nye and how it taught her about the incredible life of the Fife-born MP and wife of Nye Bevan.

While Bevan was one of the most important ministers of the post-war Labour government and famously chief architect of the National Health Service, Lee’s achievements were arguably every bit as impressive.

Sharon Small plays a Tory transport minister (Image: free)

When she won the North Lanarkshire by-election in 1929, Lee, then aged 24, became the youngest woman MP. She went on to become the Minister for the Arts in Harold Wilson’s government of 1964-1970 and was instrumental in the foundation of the Open University. “She was bloody amazing,” says Small. “She travelled with George Orwell during the Spanish Civil War to report on it. She created arts centres with the idea of let’s take the arts to everyone, not just the elite.

“She put the first concrete into the National Theatre. And she set up the Open University. It was a joy to play that woman. We don’t tell those stories enough. Especially Scottish women, who I think have been really important.”

Theatre work has been a constant thread throughout her career. Does Small ensure she carves out time to tread the boards every few years?

“I would love to tell you that I was that organised or had a big plan,” she says, with a rueful smile. “Being a jobbing actor, it is just about trying to take advantage of whatever comes your way and hope that you can do your best.

“Being my age, there are less parts going around for women, so theatre sometimes offers those opportunities. I have been really grateful and happy to have been in lovely projects.”

Small reels off some of her recent favourites. “I did a little play at the Donmar [Warehouse in London] called The Trials, which was about young people holding us to account for our climate footprint. I was playing somebody who was part of an oil company who had been a green washer.

“That was important to me and especially since Brexit and the [Scottish] independence referendum, I’m much more politically obsessed.

“Then to go on and do Good [at the National Theatre], which was about the creep of fascism. It felt really important for us to wake up everyone.”

Small likes the idea of being able to shine a spotlight on issue-led stories that aren’t afraid to pack a punch. “I’m scared that we’re in such a climate of blame,” she says. “We’re angry and blaming all those people who are actually running towards the fire.”

We go on to touch on everything from the rise of AI (“The threat to all of us, even our jobs. Keep the humanity alive. We can get very seduced by perfection”) to her mottos for life (“Comparison is the thief of joy. I have to tell myself that often”).

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Away from work, family life with her partner Dan and their sons, now aged 16 and 18, takes priority. Small chuckles when asked what she does for fun. “I was chatting about this with my other half,” she says. “I tend to come home, slightly over-mum, get in their faces a lot and over-tidy and clean.

“I need to get a hobby. That’s the hardest bit, isn’t it? When you are a freelancer, it is just how to keep yourself busy in between jobs. I need a bloody hobby. I used to go do pottery, painting and stuff like that.”

Small makes for entertaining company. We go off on tangents, but every so often she’ll remember to bring us back to the purpose of our conversation, with a cheery yet pointed, “Anyway, this has nothing to do with Nightsleeper …”

She insists that starring in the show hasn’t put her off train travel. What can viewers expect over the coming episodes? “It is a white-knuckle ride. I really do think it is one of those things where you can easily put yourself in that situation and think, ‘Oh my God, that could have been me.’ “There are people from all walks of life in it. It is that classic thing of, ‘What would I do?’ and who becomes heroes and who doesn’t.”

It is almost time to wrap up our conversation. I proffer some further apologies about my grumpy dog, which Small bats away with good-natured grace. “And remember Taggart,” she says, just before we both hit the end call button. The campaign starts here.

Nightsleeper continues on BBC One, Sunday and Monday, 9pm. All six episodes available to watch on BBC iPlayer now