Interview: River City and Scot Squad star Jordan Young

Young, 36, has gone on to garner widespread plaudits for his role in the series including from the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who in February took to Twitter to praise his emotionally charged performance as a bereaved father mourning the death of his prematurely born son.

The Fife-born actor is gearing up for some of his most explosive scenes to date being aired this week. There has been the slow burn of illicit romance in Shieldinch as Alex embarked on an affair with Dr Annie Jandhu played by Dawn Steele.

The touch paper will be fully lit as Annie’s cuckolded husband AJ – Still Game star and comedian Sanjeev Kohli – chooses to publicly expose their betrayal.

It marks yet another plot twist for a character whose story arc has seen more hurtling peaks and troughs than a post-Brexit stock market chart.

Yet, while the unfolding affair has created classic soap opera intrigue, it was the recent poignant storyline that saw Alex and ex-wife Kelly-Marie lose their new baby that really got under the skin.

Young admits that the lingering emotional impact from those scenes – in which Alex maintained a bedside vigil beside his critically ill son David – took him completely by surprise. “It was the only thing I have ever done as an actor that has stayed with me for a while afterwards,” he says.

“Usually when you are playing high drama – dying or killing someone – you can break the tension with a bit of light relief when you are off stage or the cameras stop rolling. Actors tend to be gregarious and up for a laugh, but there was none of that when filming those scenes.

“I would spend a lot of the day crying or in an intense place emotionally. Even when we stopped shooting it stayed with me. I have never been affected that way before.”

Such was the intense realism of those scenes that Sturgeon was swift to post on Twitter that Young deserved an acting award. “I didn’t know she watched the show until then,” he says, smiling. “I was blown away to be honest, being an SNP supporter and Yes voter.

“Nicola Sturgeon is someone I respect and admire. To have that from a politician with no agenda – it came from her simply as a viewer – bowled me over. Praise from the First Minister of your country is pretty special. I was delighted. I took a wee screengrab and sent it to my mum.”

In person, Young couldn’t be further removed from his brash and bolshie on-screen alter ego. He has a thoughtful and self-effacing manner with the good grace to blush a deep red beneath his tan when his growing legion of admirers are mentioned.

“I love the fact that Alex is different from me,” he muses. “He is mean and moody and loves himself. He is quite strong and I like that because I’m not a strong person in terms of temperament. I’m not very decisive. Or in control. I’m a bit weak as water.”

Yet, he is arguably doing himself a disservice. Young’s own life is not without its share of adversity. He was 14 when his father was killed in a road accident. His face clouds as he remembers the cloying sense of grief that left him utterly rudderless through much of his teenage years.

“It informs every single aspect of your life from then on,” he says. “Not necessarily in a good way either because through experience I know that everything can change in the click of a finger. That awareness is always something there at the back of my mind.”

His father Peter was 44 when he died. Between jobs at the time, the financial advisor had taken temporary work as a delivery driver. He had been doing it barely a week when the accident happened.

“I remember the day as clear as if it was yesterday,” says Young. “The accident happened at 11.15am and the decision was made to get me from school before news started to filter through. I was in biology and called out of class. I could have been asked to go to the office for any number of reasons, but I knew instantly something was wrong.”

Young recalls the long walk from the science huts to the office. On the way he saw one of his favourite teachers with tears in his eyes. A huddle of staff stood outside the office sobbing. “I realised that was for me,” he says.

His voice cracks with emotion. “My mum and dad had such a strong marriage. They married young, were so in love and we had a strong family unit.” Young blinks sharply as if still stunned by the unfairness of it all.

Flanked by his mother’s best friend and the policeman who had relayed the news, Young was enveloped by a sudden numbness. He closes his eyes, lost in the memory that he can conjure like frames in a film.

“As I walked outside I looked up at the skylight above the stairwell and in that moment thought: ‘My life will never be the same again,’” he says. “It is that snapshot: March 18, 1994. My happy family life as I knew it was gone. An impact like that is like a hand grenade going off in your living room.”

Life may have jumped the tracks but it was through acting that Young stopped himself becoming completely derailed. He found solace in the school drama department where making the quantum leap from the emotional quagmire of his own mind space to temporarily inhabit whatever character he was playing became a means of escapism.

“I was unaware of it at the time and it is only looking back now with hindsight that I realise just how important it was,” he says. “The whole joy of acting for me is pretending to be something else. It is about being something you are not in your real life. I would probably be a psychiatrist’s dream if I sat down on their couch. They would untie all that in my head and say that’s what it is about.”

Young went on to hone his craft at Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh. He spent six years working part time in bars to pay the bills before landing parts in TV shows, including Rebus, Still Game, Rab C Nesbitt and Legit, with Clare Grogan who played his mother.

He was among the original cast of Gregory Burke’s award-winning production Black Watch and later played the lead in Stuart Hepburn’s bio-play Marco Pantani – The Pirate, about the Italian road racing cyclist.

Alongside River City, Young has won fans for his role in the cult BBC Scotland sitcom Scot Squad. Created by Joe Hullait and styled as a fly-on-the-wall mockumentary, the comedy charts the hapless antics of the fictional Scottish Police Force. Filming is currently underway on a third series.

PC Jack McLaren – played brilliantly by Young – is a fitness fanatic/martial arts expert and smug, self-styled ladies’ man whose patter is akin to voluntarily taking a wire scouring pad to your own eyes. “He’s a bit of an arsehole,” says Young, with a grin. “Although so is Alex. Hmm. Typecast?”

Young has no hesitation in dissecting his Scot Squad character. “To be honest I don’t think that anyone would find PC Jack McLaren attractive,” he says. “They would find him obnoxious. In his head he is God’s gift but I don’t think that is necessarily an attractive trait to other people.”

The perfect foil to PC Jack McLaren’s raft of toe-curling antics is Sally Reid, who plays the affable PC Sarah Fletcher and happens to be one of Young’s best mates in real life too.

“We weren’t put together on screen because of that – it was purely coincidental,” he clarifies. “Because we are such good friends there is a lot of trust and honesty between us as actors which you might not have with a stranger. I feel incredibly safe working with her.

“I got to know Sally through years of going to the same parties and doing different things for the Comedy Unit such as Rough Cuts at The Stand. My wife – long before she was my wife or even my girlfriend – was friends with Sally and they lived in the same stairwell. She is one of our best pals.”

In fact, Reid had a role in playing cupid. But first let’s rewind a moment. The meeting of the future Mr and Mrs Young is too adorable to omit. The couple fell in love during a run of Cinderella at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow 11 years ago described by Young as “when Dandini met the dancer” (a romantic inscription that they now have on their wedding rings).

“It was love at first sight for me but Karen had to be convinced – strongly,” he jokes. Reid was one of those who helped with the convincing. “She remembers Karen coming back from rehearsals and talking about me. Sally would say: ‘Give him a chance, he’s a nice guy.’”

Thankfully all that coaxing and cajoling worked. He and Karen, 40, a choreographer, are happily married and have a daughter Marley, three. Home life is clearly Young’s anchor away from acting. His eyes sparkle as he talks about family and returning to his native Fife whenever possible.

Having grown up in the small village of Kettlebridge, Young laments that almost a decade in Edinburgh and now Glasgow has eroded his thick Fife accent. “I’m using ‘wean’ instead of ‘bairn’,” he says, with a wry head shake. “My mates are like: ‘What?’ Wean is such a weegie thing to say.”

Young looks momentarily stumped when asked about his dream role. Isn’t Daniel Craig about to vacate the Bond job soon? With that chiselled jawline, Young wouldn’t be completely ridiculous.

He gives a hearty laugh. “My dad was a huge Bond fan and my brother and I grew up loving the films,” he says. “That would be pinnacle for most guys. But I’m too broad [in his accent] for Bond, too short for Bond – there is a million reasons why not. But fantasy land? Definitely.”

Ultimately, Young aspires to continue pushing the envelope in his career and is keen to try his hand at period drama or a gritty crime series.

“It has never been about fame,” he says. “I want to earn a living but I have no ambition to be a multi-millionaire movie star. A lot of people have had great careers as character actors and can live a normal life while being successful.

“Now I’m 36 I don’t think there is any chance of me becoming a Hollywood superstar. I’m a realist. The longer you are in the industry you see how it works and what niche you fit into.”

Young is sanguine about relishing the role of Alex for as long as possible, but equally realistic that every character in River City – like those of Coronation Street and EastEnders – has a shelf life.

“Since coming into the show Alex has had a lot of different storylines and personality traits,” he says. “It is the nature of the beast of soap that you need to reinvent things in order to keep it fresh.

“That is why people leave and new people are brought in. I don’t think it is anything personal. My character might get killed off for no reason other than they need to keep the audience interested. I hope that’s not going to happen any time soon but it is completely outwith my control. I would like to think there are still a good few storylines ahead for Alex.”

It doesn’t mean Young is hankering for an on-screen fairy-tale ending. The last time he was at House for an Art Lover was filming the wedding scenes between Alex and Kelly-Marie – a union that imploded within weeks. Abject misery, he says, is the base ingredient to success in the genre.

“Everyone always says to me in the street: ‘Aw, you need to get back with Kelly-Marie …’ but if you went, ‘OK, let’s make them happy,’ that isn’t going to work. Seeing them cook dinner, watch X Factor and have a wee kiss? There is no drama in happiness: they need to split up, fight and have affairs.”

River City is on BBC One, Tuesdays, 8pm