One day struggling Anglo thesp, the next middlebrow heart-throb of the Sunday Night set, and now the hottest British talent, well, since Arsenal last landed the title. Keeping up with Colin Firth, ditching Darcy for Hornby in Fever Pitch, is no mean
feat. Neil Jeffries goes on set to meet the rugged lead of a romantic movie that just happens to be about footie. Really. Pitchside action captured by Alan Strutt.

An upstairs window is thrown open and out of it is thrust a head beneath a mop of brown curly hair. Piercing brown eyes glare down at the street and the peace of a quiet north London street is interrupted as the head in the window bellows: "Will you please, please, please, please, please just FUCK OFF!"  For anyone hoping to meet Colin Firth this is, frankly, not a good time to ring the doorbell.  Because he's not himself, today. He is Paul Ashworth, English teacher and Arsenal fan. It's June 1996 but he thinks it's April 26, 1989 - he's watching TV where Arsenal are trying to do the impossible and beat
Liverpool 2-0 at Anfield to nick the Football League Championship off the hot favourites on the last day of the season. And so the person ringing his bell (pun intended) is not me but school teacher Sarah Hughes (Ruth Gemmell) his co-star in Fever Pitch. 

The film is the creation of writer, ex-teacher and Arsenal fanatic Nick Hornby, and tells how one man's obsession with a football team obstructs the path of true love. But although it bears the same title as Hornby's autobiographical best seller, the screenplay is a work of fiction, a romantic comedy if you will, that more closely resembles Hornby's novel High Fidelity. Given the stigma attached to 'football films' this is probably just as well. 

Speak to anyone on the set and they'll be keen to dispel the idea that the film will only appeal to football fans. Producer Amanda Posey, a graduate of the Stephen Woolley/Nick Powell academy at Palace/Scala, is quietly confident: "All the Arsenal talk will be just jargon, like Homeboy speak in a Homeboy film. But we intend to use teleprinter captions as subtitles for the hard of football. . ." 

Director David Evans bristles at the suggestion this might be a football film: "There are no actors in shorts in Fever Pitch. The only people who play football are professional footballers and there is no attempt to blend them with actors the way the genre always seems to do. This is a romantic comedy. The plot of this film is boy meets girl. . . '  "But," interjects Hornby, smirking, "we hear the word 'Arsenal' about 18 million times . . ."  A couple of months later, Firth is able to shore up the defence: 'It seriously isn't a football movie - although it's very stupid to pretend football isn't largely featured. But I think most of the sports movies that have worked have done so because they're not focusing on the sport. Like Raging Bull; it's not a boxing movie, it's about machismo and jealousy and relationships. And although they did use boxing footage, the film
doesn't lean on it. And Fever Pitch doesn't lean on football footage - although they show the Anfield game, because it was so dramatic, as part of the climax of the film. But, again, they're not really leaning on that because it's shown in fuzzy video form: what's really happening in the scene is in the living room...' 

Cue doorbell, interrupting Firth's character pacing the room not wanting to stay but too scared to leave, opting instead for expletives out of the window. "Somehow everyone is going to feel that they've been there, even if they're not a. sports fan,' he suggests. "That scene where I'm standing with my hand on the doorknob saying, 'I can't take any more of this, I'm off, there's no point in watching . . .' is not necessarily a sports thing, it might just be an attitude one can have to a relationship. People do say, over and over again, 'I can always leave . . .' But you don't, you always stay for that little bit more. Because you retain the hope that it'll get better.' Which is a pretty romantic notion and not at all to do with football. Possibly. 

Outside Highbury Stadium, Arsenal's football ground, romance is definitely in the air. Ruth Gemmell is looking for Firth amid a street party of hundreds of delirious fans. The extras are given beer cans filled with water but some have clearly brought their own. Kids, adults and at least one baby (held aloft) are going mad and their enthusiasm isn't dampened by four takes. Somewhere in the middle is Hornby being hugged by a grizzly bear in a 1970s replica football shirt. 

"The residents around the stadium are fantastic," enthuses Firth "The interference to their daily lives is tremendous and yet their tolerance is incredible. They've really entered in the spirit of it." Between takes Firth and Hornby chat about ideas for the film soundtrack and the writer tests the actor on Arsenal trivia. Separate them for five minutes and Firth will gush. 

"I'm very fond of Nick. He's a very amusing, very intelligent person. I have huge respect for his honesty and his lack of ego. It's a hugely refreshing thing to meet someone who is a genuine intellectual - and I dare say that he'd be shy of the label himself - but he has a great intellect and with none of the pomposity and loftiness that can go with that. He's not a difficult person to like.' 

A few days later, in Steptoe's Pub in Stoke Newington, north east London Hornby is on hand again, pointing at old Arsenal photographs dressing the walls around the pool table while Firth names the faces. His co-star Mark Strong grins  appreciatively. Strong - Mr. Knightly in TV's Emma and Tosker in Our Friends In The North - plays Paul's best mate Steve, and is an Arsenal fan in real life so knows all this stuff, but Firth has taught himself. Hornby's enthusiasm has clearly got to him. "I realised I might possibly be in trouble one morning," Firth admits, "when I woke up with one of the chants in my head, possibly one of the most inane and meaningless ever heard at Highbury, the one that goes (to the tune of Yellow Submarine): 'Number one is Perry Groves, number two is Perry Groves, number three . . .' It goes all the way up to 11 then 'We all live in a Perry Groves world...' I asked Nick what the meaning was, and of course, there isn't any. But I've read the Arsenal history and watched all the videos and it didn't feel much like work. I did become quite intoxicated by it all. But I'm very cautious about claiming to be a fan because, as Nick points out in the book and the film, that takes years.' 

Then director Evans calls and Firth returns to the scene at the pool table. From his opening shot, it's clear he knows more about football. Months later and the film has wrapped. Evans has captured every nuance of Hornby's wry comedy, while the cheer spirit that pervaded the set and infected the cast and crew has transferred to screen. It's a result - and Firth is delighted. 

"The whole thing was a lot of fun. The spirit of the piece was so light and humane and honest and recogniseable to all of us that it was a great pleasure to do. A lot of that was to do with the key personalities that tend to define the movie: the director, the principal cast and Hornby. There was just this very good-natured atmosphere." 

The comedy, suggests Empire, is a bit of a change for Firth. "I suppose it is. Making the film, you lose sight of the humour but in a way, it's not your job to be funny. Your job is to take yourself all too seriously and hence the comedy, I suppose. We weren't really laughing while we were doing it - although I had found Nick's book and his script so funny. I hoped that that was how it came across. It's beautifully written stuff. I laughed out loud when I read the script, which is very unusual. It's not often that you read anything that makes you laugh out loud. 

"I don't really have any aspirations to be a great comic actor. The first job I ever had was Another Country on stage and although you wouldn't really call it a comedy, it was certainly full of laughs. The character I played was Bennett (the role taken by Rupert Everett in the 1984 film. Firth also features, but in another role), largely a comic role and because it was my first I always imagined if I got typecast it would be in that direction: a flamboyant, witty, decadent gay. It could have been a pretty good direction, actually, a lot of fun. But it didn't work out that way..." 

Firth is the son of two schoolteachers: might he have become one too, like Paul Ashworth in Fever Pitch, if things had worked out differently? 

"Not remotely. It just never entered my head ... Making the film I had to overcome a real distaste for being in a school because I loathed my own so much. I can't emphasize enough how much I hated school. I remember thinking, this is really ruining my life. I just had to get it out of my head that school is automatically a cruelty -l didn't want my little boy to have to go! I had to remind myself that there are those who actually enjoy it and it's not necessarily the nightmare I think. "So I did get a bit of a shudder when we went in. Being in assembly when all the kids take their seats and there's this smell of floor polish, seeing all those things written on the front of exercise books. I've just got a bit of a problem with institutions...' 

Paul seemed like the kind of teacher most would remember, was Firth never taught by any like him? "One or two. Schoolteachers are familiar creatures to all of us. But its quite clear that Nick Hornby was a very good teacher and, yes, I think my character Paul was, too. Even if there was too much football. And too much noise. I think he loves his kids and he loves his material too - despite the fact that Sarah can't get any evidence out of him that he's ever read anything ... 

"The kids in those scenes were amusing - we filmed in a half-term break, but they came back.'  Were they aware of him as an actor? 

'Not particularly, I don't think. When I first got there, I wasn't very much noticed, but as the days went on, the instructions had obviously gone out from the mums: 'Go and get an autograph from Mr. Darcy.' "There were a few questions: 'Are you rich? How much money do you make then? You must be really rich - what kind of car do you drive? Are you famous then?' But the boys were more interested in Nick.." Was there more attention in the street scenes? "Yes, I suppose there was. And it's the first time I've really experienced that, because it's the first time I've done a job in England since that whole Jane Austen thing.' 

Do you find that hard to deal with? 

"Um, no, it just meant that it took an awfully long time to get to the loo," he laughs. "It wasn't like I was mobbed or anything. The only thing that can be disagreeable, and I've found this many times over the years, although not really on this set, is that English people can be a bit churlish when they recognise you. They'll come up to you and want to show you that they're not impressed and end up being rude. It's the opposite in America where - it doesn't happen to me but I've seen it happen to others - people say, 'I like your work. Can I have your autograph?' and then go away. In England they say, 'Are you that bloke from that programme?' And if you say,' Yes', they might go, ' No you're not!' Then if you say, 'No, you're right, I'm
not', they'll say, 'You bloody are!' If there are two of them, they'll say, 'You're much better looking on screen? Have you put on weight? What've you done to your hair? It must be all that makeup and lights that makes it look good on telly'. And if you give one an autograph they'll say, 'I didn't want it, she did...' "  So much for romance, does anybody know the score?