Kasabian singer in new wrestling sitcom

Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan has filmed scenes for a new sitcom about Seventies British wrestling called Walk Like A Panther.

He plays a ‘mentally-deranged’ bouncer in the pilot episode, which also features This Is England star Stephen Graham and a cameo from chef Marco Pierre White.

Meighan admitted he was scared about making his acting debut, telling Q magazine: ‘I loved it but I was shitting myself first of all. It was more nerve-racking than playing Glastonbury.’

Others taking part in the pilot – which was shot in Bradford and Leeds last month – include 300 actress Lena Headey, Lock Stock actor Dexter Fletcher and Lenny Beige creator Steve Furst.

Producers Finite Films say the show ‘blends comedy, heartfelt drama and ill-fitting lycra’.

The film is set in modern times, with a band of former wrestlers reminiscing about old times more than 20 years after the plug was pulled on British wrestling on TV.

According to one extra, one scene has the wrestlers attending a wake in a pub for a colleague called Ginger Frost. A young girl burst into the pub, screaming she'd been attacked by her boyfriend, who follows her in and starts insulting the old wrestlers.

Posting on wrestlingfurnace.com, the onlooker said: ‘So they set about him, and one of them got him in a Full Nelson, they gave him the bumps, got him in a Boston Crab, dragged him across the floor and smashed him into a table, did an elbow drop on him, then threw him out.’

Meighan’s bandmate Serge Pizzorno is funding the film with playboy adventurer and restaurateur Chris Jonns, a friend of Noel Gallagher’s. It has been written by Dan Cadan, who previously worked as an assistant to Guy Ritchie on Snatch.

The comedy has yet to secure a broadcaster.

Published: 22 Feb 2011