IT'S still the same soft, polite voice, but that nice Tim Booth is looking positively demonic these days with a shaven head and huge moustache. Naturally, this shifty guise is all in the name of art.

'I have got a small part in the next Batman film, and I am filming at the moment. I am a villain, which is what I have been looking for,' Booth says.

But all efforts to squeeze more information out of him about Batman Begins ' which also stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman ' fail.

'They made me sign a huge confidentiality clause,' Booth says apologetically. But what he can tell us is that the M.E.N. was partly responsible for this happy turn of events.

'After James, I really wanted to focus on acting, acting classes and my scriptwriting,' he explains.

'I did a play at Bolton Octagon, Saved, and won an award (best newcomer) in the M.E.N. Theatre Awards. That really made me say, yes, I want to do more of this.'

So he took acting classes in London and also bashed out a movie script about an assassin going undercover in a new age Californian health spa. The script was 'optioned' but has yet to be made into a movie.

Baby son

Even family life has been busy. Booth has a new-born baby son ' a 15-year age gap with his elder son.

'I am really lucky. I feel that I have such a great life,' says Booth, a famously spiritual kind of guy, given to meditation, alternative therapies and ecstatic dance.

And then there is that accidental music. 'I make music because I have to make music,' he says. 'It is like burping.

"It is a way of expressing my life and understanding my life. I was writing some songs very casually with this young guy, Kevin Kerrigan, who had never had anything published before, and the songs started getting better and better.'

The songs, crafted in Booth's box room with sea views in Brighton, were intended to be given to someone else to sing, but when another musician, Lee 'Muddy' Baker, came into Booth's orbit, they found themselves working towards the album Bone, already well-received by the critics.

BOOTH, now 44, is playing dates with a young band of musicians who have never played before the kind of crowd he will get at the Move festival at Old Trafford on the same bill as the Stereophonics, The Pixies and Goldfrapp.

His departure from James was amicable and he remains in touch with his former bandmates.

But asked whether he had ever considered returning to the James fold since his farewell gig at the M.E.N. Arena in December, 2001, Booth replies firmly in the negative.

James

In their near 20 years of existence ' which included 18 top 40 hits ' James were always somewhat apart from their successful peers.

'I don't fit really and most of the time I'm happy with that,' says Booth, who recalls that one major record company once refused to sign James on the basis that Booth's occasional habit of wearing a dress on stage would not play well in America's deep south.

'Sometimes I am a bit envious that James have almost been written out of the Manchester history books by the music press because they did not know where to place us. We did not have those exciting drug stories like the Happy Mondays.'

Booth thinks of James as being mavericks in the mould of The Smiths. Morrissey was, at one time, a big advocate for James and a friend of Booth.

'I have not seen him for years. We got on very well and I am sure that if we bumped into each other we would get on very well again,' says Booth.

'I think he saw me as a kindred spirit. We used to go out to cemeteries together and do wonderful things like that. He used to love walking through cemeteries in Manchester.'

Tim Booth plays Move on Saturday, July 10. Tickets are priced '30. To book call 0870 060 1768 or click here . His solo LP, Bone, is out now.

Tweet