His dying words as the lanky DC in Cracker were 'Cantona' and he got to meet his hero on the set of his latest film. But for this Salford Red the man of the moment is not a hero but a villain - Rupert Murdoch. You could say Chris Eccleston is a conspiracy theroist. He's convinced Rupert Murdoch is set on the wholesale destruction of English football and that he's now about to start on English television. And he's also got an interesting theory about why his character was written out of the TV drama Cracker. In the best traditions of the X-Files, there's one strand that links it all together, but in this case it isn't the FBI or the CIA: it's Manchester United. Eccleston has appeared in some classic dramas over the past few years - including Our Friends in the North, Hearts and Minds - and nine films, among them Let Him Have It, Jude, Shallow Grave and the recently released period drama, Elizabeth. But viewers would be most likely to remember him for his portrayal of DCI Billborough, the earnest plod to Robbie Coltrane's charismatic criminal psychologist in Cracker. Cracker was written by Jimmy McGovern. And Jimmy McGovem is a hardcore Liverpool fan. Hence the theory. 'I made Billborough a Red,' Eccleston, who is a season ticket holder in Old Trafford's South Stand, remembers. 'Jimmy , hated it. If you notice, in the first series one of the coppers who gets killed is called Giggs. That wasn't accidental. And then of course he had me stabbed by Robert Carlyle's character - a Liverpool fan.' But Eccleston managed one last dig at the director. 'Just before I'm stabbed, if you listen very carefully, I'm teaching my baby to say: "Ooh-aah, ooh-aah Cantona." And Jimmy really hated that.' Eccleston has his tongue in his cheek, but it's not too hard to reconcile his devotion to Manchester United with the man himself. He talks with a strong Manchester accent, as you'd expect from somebody who was brought up in Salford. His dad remembers the 1948 team in detail and his mum sold pies from a trolley at Old Trafford while the Busby Babes entertained on the pitch. You could say United is in his blood. Although Eccleston managed to win a place in the Salford Boys side - which he ascribes to 'enthusiasm and determination, which I've got in bucketloads' - his preferred participatory sport is running. A few days before we met he completed the Great North Run in a wholly respectable time and he's clearly built for it, with a runner's wiry frame and suitably gaunt features. The one thing that strikes you is his intensity. If he's on a subject close to his heart he'll hold your gaze seemingly without blinking. And there's no doubt about the subjects that are close to his heart. Acting and football. Both are linked in Eccleston's career. You get the sense that his favourite players are the ones who sum up his own attitude. He doesn't deliberate before naming his favourite player: 'Paul Scholes: I just like the way he conducts himself. And I won I £400 on him the night England beat Georgia. I had 40-1 on an England win, with Scholes scoring first. Wright and Gascoigne were running about with their tongues out and he just trotted out and did the job. Scored the first goal and got Man of the Match.' Eccleston is far too self-effacing to entertain any comparisons between himself and his hero, and he certainly won't let you do so on his behalf. 'He's a naturally gifted footballer, whereas I've had to work very hard to make myself a halfway decent actor. But what I admire in Scholesy is that he never takes his gift for granted. He.s like Cantona - they both work at the game.' Ah, Eric Cantona. Another professional role model, whom Eccleston just happened to find himself working alongside on Elizabeth. 'I was with him once,' he says, 'watching the camera- men setting up, watching the actors doing their takes and taking it all in. There's a certain humility to that. And I think you can see that in the way he played.' If Eccleston is aware of any paradox inherent in describing Cantona as humble, he doesn't let on. 'He would see things with a generosity and a vision and it was that that I loved him for, more than the collars up and all that.' Not that the actor who called his Cracker 'screen son', Ryan, beat a path to Cantona's trailer. 'I walked around the corner and he stood there. My manner is to go up to people and introduce myself, y'know, "Chris Eccleston, playing the Duke of Norfolk," and as I'm shaking his hand there are two assistant directors doing this,' - he springs from his chair to make a genuflecting, we're-not-worthy gesture - 'and I was just trying to keep my face straight. So I never spoke to him again. It was the wardrobe department that got me my signed shirt.' It's hard to imagine Eccleston being fazed by celebrity. It's especially hard to imagine when he gets started on one of the topics that really wind him up - such as, for example, the sale of Manchester United. The topic first came up in the taxi on the way to the interview, causing him to rub his hands together as though Man United had just beaten Liverpool 3-0 and he was about to meet Jimmy McGovern. 'That's what I'm here for, lads,' he says, indicating his desire to talk about the sale. Now he shifts forward in his seat and you get the trademark Eccleston intensity - the earnestness, the direct eye contact - in full. 'I'm totally opposed to Murdoch. My line on it is that Martin Edwards and the board have betrayed Matt Busby and the Busby Babes. Everything. One- hundred-and-twenty years we've been an independent club, and now Rupert Murdoch's taken over the football's going to go out of the window.' Eccleston doesn't have a lot of time for the theory that Murdoch will be content to let the club run itself. 'Of course he'll interfere. It's a business. And even though it's a plc, a lot of people sitting on the board are local and are United fans. That means that they hear what genuine supporters feel. Soon they'll be living in New York and we won't be able to get anywhere near them.' So the future according to Eccleston is bleak. It certainly would be if it was one without Alex Ferguson (edged out for 'being a good, old-fashioned socialist'), without the Nevilles and without Scholesy, all sold abroad in lucrative deals. In that case, it'd be one without Christopher Eccleston. 'I've acnla1ly thought long and hard about not going. I'd go up the road to Bury. My mates have said to me that I won't manage it, but that's how a lot of United fans feel.' The restructuring of Manchester United isn't Eccleston's only grievance with the head of News International, and it leads him nicely into another conspiracy theory - the death of quality drama. This might not be something you'd expect to hear from somebody who made his name in Cracker and Hearts and Minds, neither of which pulled their punches, but he's adamant: 'Murdoch's fucked my life up as well. He's responsible for the fact that we don't have any decent, issue based drama because there's so much competition that it's just a ratings war with BBC and ITV competing with each other and Sky.' It's one of the 'issue based' dramas on his cv of which Eccleston is most proud. And, appropriately enough, it's the one that uniteS conspiracy theory with football - Hillsborough, directed by Jimmy McGovem. Eccleston played the father of one of the victims, a role that included meeting the relatives of disaster victims and the man he played, Trevor Hicks. Eccleston's explanation as to why the programme worked is typically direct and unambiguous. 'We addressed a major miscarriage of justice. And also we demonstrated that to get viewers and have an impact, you don't have to be set in the Yorkshire fucking Dales and be a vet.' 'It was the happiest set I've ever known, because we felt strongly about what we were doing. It's the best job I've ever done and the work I'm most proud of. You watch that programme, and you know that people went through it and you know that it dido't have to happen, and you know that the people who made it happen have never stood up and said: "It was our fault."' Eccleston has stayed in touch with the Hicks family and feels close enough to them to describe them as friends, which probably isn't an accolade he bestows lightly. 'As far as I know, they were very happy with the programme because they felt that it expressed their side of things as well as the issue, and got it on the agenda. The families were shown the video, and I know that Trevor found it very difficult, but it can't come close to the horror of that day. And good things have come out of it, because we're friends. Heading back with this in mind, I notice Eccleston's face on one of the publicity posters for Elizabeth. Above the photograph, which Eccleston refers to as 'the skinhead', it describes his character in the film with the word 'traitor'. It seems like the most wildly inaccurate word you could choose. Angry, dedicated or politically aware, maybe. Traitor? I don't think so. story Richard Pendleton photos Hugo Dixon