Borgias' actor David Oakes's Desert Island Folk

I love Twitter. I looked at my phone one day to discover that I was being followed on there by someone who looked slightly familiar and had a dramatic looking profile pic.

David Oakes described himself on his blurb as an "actor who likes folk music". Turned out (a) the reason why he looked familiar was because he'd been in Trinity, a pretty weird and addictive TV show I borrowed from Love Film for reasons that elude me now. And (b) Oakes was starring in something big budget with Jeremy Irons called The Borgias that's been showing on Sky Atlantic and is now available on DVD. 

That's him, as Juan Borgia. 

My thinking was that there's a similarity of intention between folk music and costume drama, so if you like folk there's a strong chance you'll also enjoy a good historical swashbuckling shagathon like The Borgias - and vice versa? - and may be interested to hear there's a folky who's acting in one. 

So, I asked Oakes, 29, whether he'd be interested in doing a kind of online Desert Island Discs? He agreed and this is the result. He wrote it, I edited it. And then I discovered that he'd thoughtfully put the songs up on YouTube where I - and you - could find them easily.

Here's David...

"I grew up in Fordingbridge in the New Forest and went to a primary school there that had mandatory country dancing classes. There were only 14 of us in my year and more boys than girls, so there were some much-dreaded weeks when I had to wear a red bib instead of a green one, denoting that I was dancing the ladies' part... This set me up nicely for a career of wearing tights and also instilled a love of music that was accompanied by the musky smell of hay bales and barbecue smoke. Fordingbridge, by the way, is not all that far from the Larmer Tree Gardens, home of the festival. But I heard my first choice of folk tune for this blog in Salisbury.

* Huckleberries Island by The Huckleberries from the album Jigweed

God knows whether they do this for a living but it seemed for several years as if every time I walked around any city in the west of England  - Bath, Salisbury, you name it - I'd stumble across this lot. In front of them there'd be toddlers jumping up and down and pensioners swinging each other around. I loved them for their bluegrassy liveliness: there's nothing stoic or dour about them. And they're a perfect accompaniment for drinking farmhouse scrumpy. 

* Prickle-eye Bush by Bellowhead from their first EP EPonymous

Driving back into Salisbury one day following an indigestion-inducing pick-your-own raspberry experience, a friend of mine put on a CD of a band she'd just heard at a festival. It was my first taste of Bellowhead - an experience bettered only by seeing them live for the first time. I'd come across Spiers and Boden before but it was their new, big band that really caught my fancy. You see, my mother plays the French horn and as a kid my attempts at television-watching often took second place to her and her friends from the Salisbury Brass Ensemble, who'd proceed to blast through their repertoire in the front room with no small pomp. I've loved brass ever since: a folk group with a brass section could have been designed for me. Prickle-eye Bush plays out in my head across the Wiltshire fields we were driving through on the day I first heard the song. It makes me think of Hardy - Tess or Jude put in imaginary cameo appearances. I also really loved Jon Boden's Folk Song a Day podcasts - they're littered with gems. Outstanding.

* My Young Man by Kate Rusby from Little Lights

More brass. This is one of those perfect songs. I love Kate’s voice, it's so expressive. And the purity of the accompaniment by such a tight knit brass ensemble makes it a beautiful modern folk tale that brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it. Listening today, there's also a sorrow within the sound of colliery brass that speaks of the pain of the mine closures under Thatcher. I think that Kate’s tale of a woman and her love for a changed man links the personal to the political and also reminds me of my time at university in Manchester. I studied English there and became entranced by the music that came from the industrial heart of our country.

* Kit's Tune / When a Knight Won His War by Martin Simpson from Prodigal Son

A few years back, I went to a folk concert hosted by the BBC as part of the proms at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the first time I'd heard either Bella Hardy or Martin Simpson but I came to love both as a result. It proved to me that the tradition will not die - people will always sing great stories. Martin did When a Knight Won His Spurs that evening and though I knew the melody from singing it in church - my father is a C of E canon - in Martin’s hands it came vividly back to life. Now I listen to the song regularly; the themes of valour, honour and duty are something I often have to deal in the roles I play and, to be honest, I don’t think audiences really understand these themes anymore. The constancy of Catholic faith throughout Europe during the time of the Borgias, or the hardship of a peasant’s life, which was central to Pillars of the Earth.  We far too readily modernise what we see and water down what we imagine to be the truth. Drama can be grittier and much more fun if we present these alien historical landscapes as they really were. It’s hard enough filming in some 'period' locations - God knows how people managed to live in them. One day on Pillars of the Earth there was a huge rainstorm and we were wading through mud up to our knees!

* Uncle Lung by Sheelanagig from the album Uncle Lung

During my second and final year at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School we had the privilege of being the last to perform in the Bristol Old Vic theatre before it went dark for a refurbishment. One of the many excellent things about working there was the pub next door: The Old Duke had live music every night and it was here that I first heard, danced to, and sweated profusely alongside Sheelanagig. It was like discovering the Huckleberries again - but this time I was old enough legally to drink a pint of ale. We were doing an adaption of Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and I only had one line. But I went on stage as a woman, a yokel, a beer seller, a morris dancer and a bailiff (and probably a few more that I’ve forgotten now). There were only 12 in a year at this drama school and only three women, so it was a return to my country dancing days. But I'll always have Sheelanagig. We poured out of the stage-door and into the Old Duke one particular evening, following the sound of one hell of a party kicking off: a little dancing can lift the soul. I also used their song Skotchne in a video we made at the time. 

* She Moved Through the Fair by Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet from The Juliet Letters (You may need to download Spotify to listen to that, if you don't already have it.)

My love for Elvis Costello was planted in 2007 when I was preparing for the Sam Wanamaker festival at the Globe. I was half of a duologue from Twelfth Night and had to walk out on to the most awe-inspiring stage in the UK singing Come Away Death, which is in the play. Trying to find an appropriate melody, I discovered Elvis’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet and that it had included a rendition of the song. That said, we didn’t use their arrangement. And when I walked out I was so stunned by the sight of 1,700 people staring back at me that I sang it completely out of tune. But my performance that day, despite the bum beginning, began my professional career. I was asked to join Shakespeare’s Globe company that summer for Love’s Labours Lost and a new play, We the People. The soundtrack to my six weeks' rehearsals was The Juliet Letters.

* Imporsa by Lau vs. Adem from their EP Ghosts

At the moment I'm in Bruges shooting The White Queen for the BBC and those who follow me on Twitter may have noticed a rise in jazz recommendations. In London folk's a good antidote to the modernity that's all around. But Bruges is like a museum and arguably a little frustrating for it, so jazz balances out the tourist-centred cadences of the medieval city. It hosts a rather stunning annual jazz festival and I've found two good jazz clubs so far. In fact, my only folky experience here has been the musical taste of the proprietor of Books & Brunch on Garenmarkt. So Lau and The Imagined Village have stepped in. They've been vying for my Bruges airtime with Wynton Marsalis and John Coltrane.

I think that Lau's Race the Loser is a perfect modern folk album that respects the technology available on a laptop as greatly as it does a fiddle. It'll be a classic, I reckon. 

* The Washing Song by The Imagined Village from Bending the Dark

If I was allowed a ninth track on my desert island, it’d be Caw The Yows by Maz O’Connor from On Leaves or on Sand. Now I’m off to listen to some Justice - a French Electro Duo that have bog-all to do with folk music...

Thanks for reading this.

* Follow David Oakes on Twitter @David_Oakes

* If you enjoyed this you may also be interested in this about actor and folky Stephen Mangan.

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Stephen Mangan at the Cambridge folk festival

There was something about the actor Stephen Mangan that had been bothering me since I saw Green Wing on television. Then when Episodes started on BBC Two, in which he appeared as a Hollywood screenwriter alongside Matt Le Blanc of Friends and Tamsin Greig of The Archers - and which I loved - it started to become seriously problematic.

You see, when I first watched him on TV I thought he was more famous than he was - kind of the opposite of that thing when you see someone from the telly in the street and start to say "hello" before you realise your mistake.

The suspicion crept up on me that we'd met.

There was this weird, fuzzy memory of an afternoon spent in Dublin in January 1995, where I was doing work experience. He was sitting, talking very fast in someone's flat - his own? - and was in the company of two other people, one of whom was on my newspaper course and is now a very well-known journalist. In fact, he's editor of The Times. I told you it was a weird memory. 

So when there was a sudden downpour on Sunday at the Cambridge folk festival and I retreated into a tent only to find that the he was in there too, the responsible course of action was to ask, even if it laid me open to the possibility of discovering that I was losing it...

"Yes, that was me," he said, looking quite surprised, before adding that it was nice to see me again, thus demonstrating that he has good manners, since I know perfectly well that if I hadn't seen him on television in the intervening 17 years I probably wouldn't remember him either...

However, it was such a relief to find that my mind hadn't been playing tricks on me that I had to go and sit down for a little while before returning to suggest that since it was clearly going to rain for a long time would it be OK if I interviewed him? And since he was well-mannered (and trapped) he agreed.

It turned out he was there because he made a documentary, along the lines of reclaiming a forgotten love, about playing with Richard Thompson for Sky Arts last year. The marginalised object of desire was folk music. This year the channel, which media sponsors the Cambridge folk festival, had invited him back to be interviewed. He was also doing a guitar workshop with Martin Simpson and babysitting Simpson's daughter, who seemed very sweet.

Mangan swore faithfully that he wouldn't say anything interesting to Sky, leaving the field clear for me.

"I don't know why I like folk music," he said, "because my wife doesn't like it and my friends don't like it and it makes me an outcast in my own circle. But I'm from County Mayo in Ireland and parties at our house involved carpets and rugs being pushed back.

"The process of discovering folk was a lucky one that started in the late 80s and early 90s with John Martyn and Nick Drake, then had me stumbling from one thing to another. I went to America for a year when I was 18 and someone gave me a list of things to listen to. I started with Richard Thompson.

"Then in my early 30s I got into the hard stuff: Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan. But there's this feeling that because I don't have that many mates who are into it I'm like Uri Gagarin, heading out into the void. I'm here to make some friends who like folk music."

He took a bit of a conversational detour enthusiastically to praise Fionn Regan's song Dogwood Blossom, from the soundtrack of This is England.

"For some reason it speaks to me: maybe because I have a strong melancholy streak. I like depressing music but I'm an optimist who also likes storytelling. My wife is the opposite - perhaps we complement each other in this respect. She's a pessimist who likes dance music.

"So for a long time in our house folk was a four letter word that I dare not utter. It was desperately uncool - maybe it still is, but I don't care. Eventually you have to face up to who you are and I'm a folky.

"But I'm a folky with two young children and I'm in a play at the moment that's on nearly every evening," - Birthday at the Royal Court, in which he plays a pregnant man - "so I don't get to see films, plays or gigs apart from the ones I'm actually in. When I was asked, I jumped at the chance to come here again. I love nothing better than to bring myself to the point of vomiting with nerves in the company of Richard Thompson." Not that he'd have to do that this time around...

But standing on stage is what he does for a living. Why would singing with Richard Thompson make him nervous?

"If we were doing Othello it would be fun. In fact, I think Richard should give us his Othello at some point. But there's something very exposing about singing. The music is dictating to you - the song is its own lyric. Whereas with acting you're in control.

"Singing is the most popular art form in the world but it's totally about emotion, so it's very revealing. You're expressing something about what it is to be a human being in a very pure way. Which makes it all the weirder that I'd choose to stand on a stage and sing one of the most famous songs ever written - Who Knows Where the Time Goes - while the audience nudges each other and remarks that I look the donkey out of Shrek.

"But it's good to do things every once in a while that make you want to shit yourself with fear."

Why? Most people go out of their way to avoid that.

"It makes you feel alive - it was an amazing thing. I stood there at the side of the stage and heard Richard Thompson do one of the best sets he'd ever done and then say at the end of it 'And here's Stephen Mangan'."

Despite being from County Mayo, Mangan has one of those Irish accents that doesn't really sound like an Irish accent. Dick Gaughan, on the other hand, has some fairly pungent left-wing views. I wondered whether he was comfortable with that?

"Yes, I'm quite a lefty. it's hard not to be when you're an actor because you're dealing with people. They're your bread and butter, so you have to try and understand them."

I'm pretty sure Adolph Hitler thought he understood people.

"Yes, but I don't think Adolph Hitler thought of people as people. As an actor you are mainly about people and community, and what makes people tick. I always viewed left-wing politics as having a compassion to it: I deal with the fact that kings and dustmen are all on a level, they're all human beings. For my purposes I can't look at them from a status point of view. And once you're looking at everyone in the same way you're coming from an egalitarian point of view."

A bit of probing finds that he doesn't like Mumford & Sons and when I asked about Bellowhead - whom I love - he changed the subject. "Show of Hands. They're good. I just had a tweet from the Shrewsbury festival asking whether I'd like to go along this year because Richard Thompson is going to be there, so maybe I'll get to meet them.

"After the last time, Richard invited me to sing with him again in a general kind of a way. So for a while I toyed with the idea of turning up every time he played and saying brightly 'I'm here to do my song'. Now I'm thinking of faking an emergency appendectomy so I can go to Shrewsbury. We're going to be on a family holiday in Wiltshire at the time, which isn't too far away."

So if you're at Shrewsbury and you see Stephen Mangan, be nice to him. He's there to make some folky friends.

* You can buy tickets to see him in Birthday at the Royal Court here.

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