MARTIN Compston has revealed how he won over his now-wife by singing Irish songs to her in a bar in LA.
The Line of Duty star was drinking with a friend in the bar when he first met Tianna Chanel Flynn.
He sang “Grace” and “Fields of Athenry” after she told him her dad was Irish. The songs have been adopted by fans of Celtic Football Club, who Compston supports.
Compston, who featured in ITV’s new series Our House, recently appeared as a guest on Jessie and Lennie Ware’s “Table Manners” podcast.
He revealed his wife loves Scotland before the hosts complimented her by saying she is “very gorgeous”, and asking where the couple met.
Martin said: “We met in a bar. She was the hostess in the bar in LA. There used to be this thing called pilot season, from January to March. So the whole acting world would just descend on LA and you’d have 15 auditions a day.
“I had a friend who lived there and we had a sort of tradition that when I’d arrive, we’d go on the piss for the first day.
“We went to this place and it was like Happy Hour on a Monday so the place was deserted and my wife, she is quite strikingly beautiful and she’s got this incredible hair, she was serving us but she had a Claddagh ring on, which is like an Irish promise ring.
READ MORE: Watch Martin Compston show off his Gaelic skills at Glasgow Film Festival
“She’s a mixed-race girl with this amazing hair, American…I’m going ‘why have you got an Irish promise ring’ and she’s like ‘my dad’s Irish’.”
Compston was asked didn’t he think she was taken due to the promise ring but he replied, “No, because of the way it was pointing”.
Jessie said: “How do you know so much about this?”
Compston told her he has got Irish family.
She said: “So it points one way, and that means..” before he jumped in and said, “That means it’s game on”.
He went on: “So aye, I’d seen that, and for better or worse, growing up a west coast Catholic in Scotland, being a Celtic fan, you know all of the Irish Rebel songs and all the old folk songs.”
He explained he started singing to her after having “a right few drinks”.
“I think I sang her ‘The Fields of Athenry’,” he said. “And I think I sang her ‘Grace’, yeah, Grace, I think it’s one of the most beautiful love songs ever written.”
He was asked who taught him the song after he explained what it was about, and he said: “It’s just something growing up, where I grew up, that you know.
“There was nobody else in the bar so she was kinda forced to put up with me and my pal for several hours.
“She was getting a right kick out of it because she was telling her dad. I think she text him firstly and his first question back was ‘Celtic or Rangers’. I think saying Celtic kinda got me in.”
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