PETER MULLAN is enjoying a bit of a rant.

But it's not austerity measures or the current state of the Government he is letting off steam over – it's the cyclists he encountered while filming in Brighton.

"They are out to save the planet but they just don't like people. Seriously, I have never met as many aggressive people and I am from Glasgow," he says.

Affably gruff, Mullan likes a drink, likes to swear and enjoys looking for mischief, twisting words for comic effect and chortling with laughter.

Unsurprisingly then, that despite his lauded career (he won the Best Actor award in Cannes for Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe in 1998 and four years later his film The Magdalene Sisters won the top gong at the Venice Film Festival), Mullan can't abide any form of luvvie behaviour.

"I am always suspicious of actors when they feel obliged to apologise for just about every character they play," says the 53-year-old.

It is why he is not going to start asking for forgiveness on behalf of his latest incarnation, a Brighton crime boss called Richie Beckett in Channel 4's four-part drama The Fear, which begins tonight.

"He is a nasty son of a bitch that has made a living out of people's poverty and addiction," says Mullan. "He might see himself as a businessman but he is a gangster in reality, which I suppose some businessmen are, at least in my book anyway."

The Fear is far from typical gangster fare, because it quickly transpires Richie is suffering from Alzheimer's.

It is that juxtaposition that attracted Mullan to the role. "A gangster with Alzheimer's is interesting, to me. A gangster TV series, I'm not interested in," says Mullan simply.

"As the disease takes hold, Richie becomes more aggressive, more emotional and, in a weird way, paradoxically, more open, more vulnerable than he has ever been before," says Mullan.

Less accomplished actors might wrestle with finding the right tonal balance but Mullan does not seek the viewer's sympathy.

"You can feel empathy yes, but sympathy? You shouldn't care two hoots, if I'm being honest," says Mullan. "I mean, you are looking at a guy who has been running a drug empire for years, he has killed people to get to where he is and he would not think twice – in the past – about the number of lives he has destroyed through the so-called illegal product that he sells."

He agrees that perhaps there are moments when the viewer might not dislike him as much, but he hopes that never turns to pity – "because that would lead to sympathy and let him off the hook", he explains.

That said, Mullan is not out to depict a monster either. "You don't have to like him very much, but he is a human being and attention must be paid to that," he says. "One should look at someone for what he or she has done in the world and is doing to people.

"And then when you are playing that person you have no choice but to put that all aside for a moment and then give he or she as much humanity as is possible."

Mullan, born the son of a nurse and lab technician, and his seven siblings (he was second youngest) endured the wrath of their alcoholic and abusive father for years.

Mullan would later use these early memories as the basis of Neds, a film set in the Glasgow of his youth, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Mullan played the father.

Just like the film's protagonist, he, too, was an intelligent boy who fell in with the wrong crowd during his teens. He would later turn it around, enrolling himself on a history and drama course at Glasgow University.

When he was 19, he made various short films before moving into theatre and then in 1991 received huge recognition for his role as the alcoholic Jake in Ken Loach's Riff-Raff.

This was swiftly followed with parts in Braveheart and Trainspotting. He has worked consistently since.

l The Fear airs over four consecutive nights on Channel 4, starting tonight at 10pm.