A giant step from the streets to the gates of Bologna

GLENN GANNON’S latest role has him dressed as a French nobleman, one of a group solemnly handing over the keys to Bologna to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in the final series of The Tudors. It is a long, long way from the time he lived on the streets of Dublin, drinking himself into oblivion.

The 57-year-old actor, who still works on behalf of the Simon Community, once weighed just six-and-a-half stone and collapsed three times in a week through malnutrition and alcohol intake.

“I saw my reflection in a shop window one time and I was this old man with a beard and a bag,” he says. “I didn’t recognise myself.”