Nobody who sees This is England forgets Vicky McClure’s first appearance as Lol in a hurry. In Shane Meadows’ 2006 skinhead drama, set in the hot summer of 1983, Thomas Turgoose’s bullied schoolboy Shaun, whose father has been killed in the Falklands, has fallen in with a gang led by the charismatic young skinhead Woody (Joe Gilgun). They’ve offered him kinship as well as fashion advice. It’s time to shave his head. Brandishing the shears is McClure’s Lol, Woody’s girlfriend, in a Fred Perry polo shirt, her own strange lid somewhere between Trappist monk and Paul Weller.
Are you ready, Shaun?” she asks, the clippers buzzing. “Are you sure? You don’t seem very confident.”
