Source article - moved! A TRUE ROMANCE: NICCI IS MY REAL-LIFE ANGEL. I SPENT £3000 WOOING HER BY PHONE May 23 2004 EXCLUSIVE Ballykissangel star wants kid No2 By Sharon Feinstein BALLYKISSANGEL star Stephen Tompkinson has revealed he and Scots wife Nicci Taylor are trying for a second child. He is besotted by his Aberdeen-born wife of two and a half years and says she and daughter Daisy, three, are his reasons for living. Stephen, 38, met Nicci when she worked at his London tailor's shop. He said he bought three dozen suits before he plucked up the courage to ask her for a date. But after that first night out he left for a long-planned holiday in South Africa. He spent £3000 phoning her sometimes for eight hours a day before they were reunited. Stephen, who had talked of marrying his Ballykissangel co-star Dervla Kirwin, admitted he had to borrow from his dad to pay the phone bill. Speaking in his dressing-room at London's Comedy Theatre, where he stars in the play Rattle of A Simple Man with Michelle Collins, Stephen revealed: 'My wife is the rock and Sellotape that holds it all together. 'She's great fun and from Aberdeen originally. She's an amazing mum. She and Daisy are thick as thieves. They're my two best friends. We look after each other.' Stephen told of the moment he knew he wanted another child. He said: 'We were looking at Daisy in the garden at Christmas making footprints in the snow and we thought it would be nice for her to have a playmate. 'Daisy and Nicci are my reasons for living. I'm smitten with them both. I love being a father and a husband.' Rattle of a Simple Man means 16 weeks of getting back home to Dachet, Windsor, at 11.30 every night. Needless to say his dressing-room is covered with pictures of a smiling, blonde Nicci and Daisy. Stephen said: 'I miss them completely when I'm away and getting back so late. 'Nicci and I keep looking at each other and wondering how we got so lucky.' Stephen shot to fame in Ballykissangel but he says: 'Nikki didn't know who I was. It was a clean start to the relationship.' She was working for tailor William Hunt, so Stephen bought three dozen suits he didn't need just so he could hang about and pluck up the courage to ask her out. He said: 'After a while she said, 'Oh, my mum's heard of you'. So I said, 'Let's ring your mum'. I thought, 'Get to the daughter through the mother, it'll save me buying suits'. She agreed to a date and it was lovely.' But he immediately flew to South Africa on a cricket-watching holiday for three weeks with his parents and spent hours phoning Nicci. Stephen said: 'My dad had to bail me out on the £3000 phone bill it cost more than the holiday. 'We must have had the equivalent of six months' talking while I was away so, by the time I came home, we knew each other inside out. 'I recommend it to anyone, the discipline of not being able to see or touch the woman you're falling in love with, just conversation. We'd never been to bed yet I was smitten. 'It was the best foundation we could have wished for. Our physical relationship was then a natural, beautiful progression, and Daisy came along after four months. 'Ours is a real love story. I get hairs standing up the back of my neck talking about it. It's magical.' Stephen, from Stockton-on-Tees, has starred in British hit films like Brassed Off, with chum Ewan McGregor but he would love to crack Hollywood. And his chance could come soon. He has been chosen by Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey to star in Cloaca at London's Old Vic Theatre and hopes this will be his passport to a glittering film career so that he can shower Nicci with 'whatever she wants'. Stephen said: 'Kevin and I got on like a house on fire. He said he knew me from Brassed Off and that it was a wonderful film. 'I rang Nicci to say, 'If the phone rings and it's Kevin Spacey, tell him I'm on the mobile. 'She screamed, 'What! Kevin Spacey!' and, of course, Daisy knows him as the voice of Hopper in A Bug's Life, so I explained to her. 'We're all terribly excited in the Tompkinson household.'