Guns in the family – The star of a new gangster drama has the pedigree for the part.

Actor Jamie Foreman will never forget the day he told his father he wanted to go on the stage. “I was visiting him in Wormwood Scrubs prison. I wasn’t sure how Dad would take the news, but bless him, he was delighted. Right from when I was little he’d always made it clear he didn’t want me to go into the family business.”
That ‘business’ involved running a small gangland empire in South London, and providing the occasional body-disposal help for the Kray’s. This meant that from time to time, Foreman Snr – the notorious Freddie Foreman - was detained at Her majesty’s Pleasure.
“In my family, prison was just an occupational hazard.” Says Jamie. “And it brought us together as a family. Because of my Dad’s work it was essential we all trusted each other, if no one else.”
Foreman teams up with Martin kemp, who of course once played one of Freddie Foreman’s erstwhile employers, in ITV’s new gangland drama Family. But if Kemp can walk the walk, it is Jamie who can talk the talk.
The pair play brothers helping top run a family business based on extortion. Starting next week, Family has been dubbed the UK’s answer to The Soprano’s. But will the public be able to swallow this portrayal of violent criminals as caring, sharing family folk? “That’s up for them to decide, isn’t it?” Shrugs Jamie. “But like my Dad always says – to other people we’re not nice, but to each other we are."