The Irish star admits he was stunned when he heard the great man had called in

David Bowie personally phoned the producers of Peaky Blinders to give them permission to use his music in the latest series of the show, its star Cillian Murphy has admitted.

Murphy, was recording a special one-off show for BBC Radio 6, revealed that the whole cast and crew of the hit period crime drama were “massive Bowie fans”, adding: “the great thing is that you will hear some music in the show, I hope.”

He said: “This mad thing happened about six months ago I suppose, maybe last Autumn. Steve Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, got a call from David Bowie’s people saying that Bowie really wanted to have some of his music used in the show. We were all completely blown away as you can imagine, all being massive Bowie fans. And then he passed which was so sad.”

“He left us with such amazing gifts. And so like everyone else I went back and listened to all the records. The one that stuck with me, for one reason or another, was ‘Young Americans’,” he admitted.

Murphy, who plays gangster Tommy Shelby in the show, head of a notorious Birmingham crime family, spoke tp Radio 6 about his favourite music. His selection includes tracks from Nick Cave, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Fionn Regan and Frank Zappa.

You can listen to Murphy’s life in music at 1pm on Radio 6 on Sunday, 8 May. The third season of Peaky Blinders is on at 9pm on Thursdays on BBC2.