HE'S gone from market stall to making movies and as JENNY SCOTT discovered Tom Miller hasn't exactly followed the conventional route to a career in the spotlight. . .

TOM Miller is used to getting caught in embarrassing situations.

After appearing on national television sprawled handcuffed and naked on a bed in with a bunch of daffodils, he feared being found in an equally compromising position in the middle of the Ribble Valley.

"I was chucking cocaine into a cement mixer," said Tom. "And one of my henchmen -- a guy who was about to go in for Britain's strongest man competition -- was beating up a reporter.

"I was dreading ramblers passing through and stumbling across us."

Fortunately, the ramblers failed to materialise and Tom and his cronies were able to continue with their nefarious activities unchallenged.

They were, however, captured on film and their dastardly deeds will be replayed to the thousands who attend the Raindance Film Festival in October.

Ribble Valley residents will be pleased to learn, though, that Tom Miller is the equity name of Martin Simmons -- a former Blackburn market trader who is now making it big in the movie world -- and the cocaine and daffodil incidents were merely part of his burgeoning acting CV

"I don't want people to think I'm lowering the tone!" laughed Martin, who is in the process of converting a 15th century barn near Ribchester into a home for his three children and his partner.

"We thought the site would be the ideal location for one of the scenes for the film."

Entitled Diary Of A Bad Lad, the movie is the brainchild of former Blackburn college lecturer Jon Williams and tells the story of a group of film students who find themselves caught up in Blackburn's shady underworld.

Martin was plucked from obscurity to star as the lead gangster after Jon visited his fabric business on Blackburn Market three years ago.

"He'd heard I was keen to get into acting," said Martin. "He came and looked me up and down and asked me if I'd like to take the part.

"I think he was looking for somebody keen enough to go for it and naive enough not to mind that we probably wouldn't be paid for a while."

In between Martin's home improvement exploits and his switch from market stall to movie star, he has also appeared in a string of high-profile TV shows.

Most notoriously was the award-winning comedy drama At Home With The Braithwaites, in which he was kidnapped and ended up handcuffed to a four poster bed with the infamous daffodils.

"After we'd finished filming, Peter Davison came up to me and told me he thought I was very brave," he said. "But I couldn't have turned down something like that - it was so high-profile. After that episode, everyone knew who I was. It raised me about three notches in casting directors' eyes."

Not that Martin's previous involvement in the acting world had been unimpressive.

His first role was as a peasant in the film First Knight, starring Sean Connery and Richard Gere.

From there, he went on to find work alongside Caroline Quentin in The Innocent, James Bolam in Shipman and Lisa Tarbuck in Linda Green.

"I'll never get a part in Pride And Prejudice!" he said. "It tends to be prison officers and heavies."

Having never formally trained in the profession, Martin might have felt intimidated by his big name co-stars.

"I know what I'm capable of," he said. "An awful lot of it is just a case of being in the right place at the right time. I've already fulfilled my number one ambition, which was to star in a film."

And, with Diary Of A Bad Lad set to make its debut in front of the country's biggest independent film producers, Martin can afford to feel confident in his future too.

"My all-time film hero is Bob Hoskins and I'd love to work with him," he said. "But hopefully, if it does as well as we hope, Diary Of A Bad Lad can work as a sort of calling card. Who knows where that will take me?"