June 14, 2011

NIGEL LINSDAY TALKS ABOUT ATILLA's INPIRATION

When Four Lions came out it was pretty obvious that Nigel Lindsay had based his character on Atilla. He talks about it here -


...The other guy was perfect. He worked as the janitor in the Finsbury Park mosque when Abu Hamza took over. This guy converted and became their spokesman. He was a bit like John Prescott in that he spoke really quickly and often talked complete gobbledegook but he had a brilliant way about him. He had real charisma and he’d come out of the mosque and he’d go, “Oi, Mr Policeman, you can’t stand there and...” And he’d talk like this the whole time. I used to do it to myself just before doing Barry scenes. He was wonderful. He got seven years for inciting racial hatred in the end. He was a Greek Cypriot. Abu Abdullah was his name but he was probably called Stefan Iliades or something...

Here is a scene from Four Lions



This is one of my vids of Attila getting animated in Finsbury all those years ago which Nigel probably watched for inspiration.


...