The sickeningly talented Johnny Flynn

‘I am walking in some mountains’. That’s the out-of-office that pops up when I email Johnny Flynn to request an interview. The folk star and West End actor is on holiday. But he’s not doing the Three Peaks Challenge. No, he’s tracing St Paul’s third missionary journey across southern Turkey, a 30th birthday present from Bea, his wife and teenage sweetheart. ‘I’m obsessed with pilgrimages,’ Flynn says. He’s also done the Way of St James, which finishes in Santiago de Compostela. ‘I love following old routes, imagining the consciousness of those who walked them.’

When he’s come down from the mountains we sit down to talk about the recent release of his third album, Country Mile. Sporting a solid tan and raggedy beard, Flynn still appears horribly handsome. And he’s sickeningly talented. The Lamda luvvie plays banjo, guitar, trumpet and violin.

But Country Mile is not your typical slick studio production. It was written in snatches, during breaks taken from the intense acting schedule Flynn has worked to over the past three years. He played alongside Mark Rylance in Jerusalem (‘thrilling to be on stage with, you don’t know what the fuck he’s going to do’), and the two teamed up again last year for a double bill of Richard III and Twelfth Night. Transferring from the Globe to Shaftesbury Avenue, the all-male production of Twelfth Night, quite the funniest Shakespeare I’ve seen, saw Flynn cast as Viola, pulling off the considerable feat of being a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man.

Flynn’s new musical offering is clearly the work of someone steeped in Shakespeare. Melancholy is ‘yellow’, hearts are ‘stout’, ‘the colours of autumn’ are ‘burnished with gold’ and (dead giveaway) ‘Mab is my queen’.