RUTH GEMMELL ON ACTING WITH COLIN:

"When I landed the part I didn't know I would be playing opposite Colin," she says. "When I found out that was nerve wracking enough. But then when I had to kiss him before I'd barely knew him, I was terrified. But he's so lovely that he immediately put me at ease.

Like everyone else I'd seen him in Pride and Prejudice and was pretty impressed. So the prospect of working with him was scary. But I decided right at the start that if I felt nervous about the love scenes I would just tell him because he's not the kind of man who would think that was funny."

The pair met in a London pub just before filming began to try and get to know each other.

"We had a few pints, swapped a few stories and by the end of it we knew how we were going to play the characters. By the time the love scenes came around he wasn't the elusive Mr Darcy anymore. He wasn't even Colin the heart-throb. He was just Colin." [Daily Mirror, March 30 1997]

Excerpts from Colin Firth's voice over from the soundtrack:

Anthropologists have always had a hard time with football. The trouble is, you can only see what's on the outside. But there is an inside, believe it or not. 

We all have our reasons for loving things the way we do.

Why is it that adults aren't supposed to go mad about anything? You've got to keep a lid on it.

And if you don't then people are apparently entitled to say what they like: You haven't grown up. You're a moron. Your conversation is trivial and boorish. You can't express your emotional needs, you can't relate to your children and you die lonely and miserable.

But, you know, what the hell.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

It's not easy to become a football fan. It takes years. But if you put in the hours you're welcomed, without question, into a new family.

Except in this family, you care about the same people and hope for the same things.

And what's childish about that?

Steve: It's the smoking. 

Paul: It's not the smoking, Steve, it's the crapness.

Football has meant too much to me, and come to represent too many things.

See, after a while, it all gets mixed up in your head, and you can't remember whether life's shit because Arsenal are shit or the other way around.

I've been to watch too many games, and spent too much money, and fretted about Arsenal when I should have been fretting about something else. I've asked too much of the people I love.

OK. I can accept all that.

... But I don't know, perhaps, it's something you can't understand unless you belong?

What about this? Three minutes to go and you're two--one up in a semi-final and you look around and you see all those thousands of faces contorted with fear and hope and worry, everyone lost, everything else gone out of their heads...

the whistle blows and everyone goes to spare, and just for those few minutes, you're at the centre of the whole world.

And the fact that you care so much, that the noise you have made has been such a crucial part of it all, is what makes it special. Because you've seen every bit as important as the players, and if you hadn't been there, then who'd be bothered about football, really?

And the great thing is it comes round again and again. There's always another season. You lose the Cup final in May, well there's the third round to look forward to in January. And what's wrong with that? It's actually pretty comforting if you think about it.

Most of the time.

But every now and then--not very often, but it happens--you catch a glimpse of a world that doesn't work like that--a world that doesn't stop in May and begin again in August.

There's some stuff that just never comes back, and some stuff that just won't go away, and some stuff that you can't ignore even if you wanted to.

When I think back to the 26th of May 1989 now, it's impossible to explain what happened to either of us--all three of us, if you count the team.

But I do know this. Something happened between me and Arsenal that night. It was as if I jumped on to the shoulders of the team and they carried me into the light that had suddenly shown down on all of us.

And the lift they gave me enabled me to part company from them, in some ways.

We still see each other all of the time, I still love them and hate them all at the same time, but I have my own life now, and my own successes and failures aren't necessarily linked up with theirs.

And that's got to be a good thing.

I suppose.