Star Wars actor Ben Miles hooks up with ex-Pearl Harbor frontman David Palfreyman in Chesterfield to record new album

David Palfreyman and Ben Miles have been recording at the Foundry Studio in Stonegravels where they shared an insight into where life has taken them since they left Derbyshire.

Ben is an acclaimed actor who appears in three episodes of the Star Wars spin-off series Andor, currently streaming on Disney Plus. He plays the part of a Russian ambassador in Ridley Scott’s new film Napoleon which stars Joaquin Phoenix and is due out in 2023. Ben’s many roles include Captain Peter Townsend in nine episodes of Netflix drama The Crown, Montague Dartie in The Forsyte Saga and the Duke of Somerset in The Hollow Crown on television, and the film Woman In Gold in which he was cast alongside Helen Mirren.

David, who digitises VHS, cine film and old slides during his work as a film and video producer, is a prolific songwriter. He collaborated with writer/actor Nicholas Pegg on the 2017 double album Decades and put out a solo album, Radio Magnetofon in 2010 as a soloist under his nickname Malf.

"I've got so many songs that have always been put out under a different name," said David. "What I wanted to do was put songs out under my name and the songs we're recording in Chesterfield are part of them. They are about life and the pitfalls and the triumphs and how life is and how life goes. I write everything on acoustic guitar."

Also an actor, David’s credits include Brassed Off, Peak Practice, EastEnders and productions for Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre and London’s Canal Cafe Theatre. Up until 18 months ago David would only visit Chesterfield a couple of times a year to see his mum Peggy, who lives in Grangewood. But then he heard a tape of musician Pete Boam who was a well-known face around town during the Eighties. David said: "Pete's music was totally different to what was happening on the scene in Chesterfield at that time. When I heard it I thought 'blimey, this is brilliant. I have got to make a documentary about this guy."

It's proved to be a lengthy, time-consuming job. David has travelled around 1,500 miles from his home in Sussex to spend hours in Chesterfield Library where he pores over newpaper articles. He has interviewed at least 20 people from Chesterfield to Brighton, the latter where Pete was living when he died in 2006 at the age of 42.David aims to premiere the documentary in Chesterfield and submit it to film festivals. Both aged 56 and with their birthdays just four days apart, Ben and David never knew each other when they lived in north Derbyshire.Ben, who went to Tupton Hall School, said: "I was in a band called Yah-Boo! when I was 15 with Paul Ball, Paul Wheeldon and John Douglas. We used to rehearse in Chesterfield and then a couple of ex-members from The Negatives joined us and we started to rehearse in Sheffield.”I bought my first bass guitar from Hudsons - it was a Westone Thunder 2 and was the only left-handed bass guitar I'd ever seen. It was terrible and sounded really bad!"

He later teamed up with Pete Boam and drummer Dave Plater in a band which expanded and went through various name changes. Ben said: "We did one gig as the Cotswold Quartet even though we were a seven-piece at the time and then played as the Pete Boam Experience. We supported Saracen at Chesterfield tech - they hated us until we did Suffragette City and Pete decided to do a heavy metal guitar solo which they quite liked!"

Ben, who recorded two tapes with Pete's band in Sheffield, viewed his latest session as a tribute to his late bandmate. He said: "This is the first time I've recorded in Chesterfield. It's lovely to come back and do something here and talk about Pete - it's nice to honour his memory.”

David's musical career started as a trombone player with the William Rhodes School Band with whom he recorded an album called The Sound of Rhodian Brass at the Goldwell Rooms in 1980.

During the Nineties David fronted the rock band Pearl Harbor, with whom he did his last recording session in Chesterfield. Following Pearl Harbor’s demise, David took over vocal duties with Doc Swallow after Eddie Hatch’s departure.

Both Ben and David went onto further education in performance arts when they left Chesterfield. Ben studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. David went to Richmond Drama School where Tom Hardy was in the year above.Fellow actor Richard Coyle, whose parents formerly lived on Derby Road in Chesterfield, organised a get-together which is where Ben and David met. Richard had starred alongside Ben in the BBC sitcom, Coupling, the series which gave Ben his big break.

David said: "Over the years Ben and I shared numerous text messages. When I found the Pete Boam tape and saw that Ben was playing on it, I thought I wonder if Ben has got this. Ben said: "I remember writing back and saying thank you for sending it....I hadn't heard it for years and it brought back so many memories of the session."

Married to a fellow musician called Eliska whom he met in London, David and his wife have a daughter Dita, 9, and a son Lenny, 3. The Palfreyman family live in Crowborough, near Tunbridge Wells.

Ben met his wife in Birmingham Rep Theatre in 1991. He said: "We were doing a play called Saturday, Sunday, Monday by Eduardo de Filipo, where we all had these terrible Italian accents. It took me until the end of the run which was about six weeks to ask her out for a drink."

Now a dad and living in London, Ben has two sons, who are musicians, and a daughter. Ben said: “My sons' influence on me is that I stopped playing because they are a lot better than me! They've absorbed a lot of the music I've been listening to. I listen to a lot of electronic music, dance music, soul and funk. I'm obsessed with the Sheffield scene of the late Seventies when people like Cabaret Voltaire and Human League were doing their stuff.”