‘It’s a lot darker than Sleaford Mods’: Jason Williamson on acting, rejection and a radical portrait of street life

‘I’ll probably trip over something’ … Jason Williamson stars in Edgecity: Monologues from the Street. Photograph: Jack Neville

In the late 1980s, fresh from being kicked out of school, Sleaford Mods frontman Jason Williamson dreamed of becoming an actor. He was looking for a way to escape the narrow-minded confines of his home town, Grantham – and treading the boards seemed like the best possible way.

“Essentially I just wanted to be famous,” he says now, “but then I started to fall in love with the process of it all.”