David has revealed how he came face to face with serial killer Peter Tobin.

The award-winning star of TV’s Trial and Retribution, told how he met Tobin at the church where he was working as a handyman.

Evil Tobin, who had killed at least two women by then, even praised Hayman’s portrayal of “bad guys”.

In a new documentary called In Search Of Bible John, which asks if Tobin is the notorious 1960s Barrowland dancehall killer, David appeals to Tobin to talk to police about his crimes.

The actor has offered to meet him behind bars in a bid to get to the truth. He said: “I would go and meet him, of course I would. It would be a great service to his victims’ families if he would come clean.”

The actor first met the killer at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Glasgow in 2006.

It was the same year Tobin murdered 23 year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk and buried her body beneath the church floorboards.

David had gone to meet the late Father Gerry Nugent at the church to discuss proposals for a fund-raiser with his children’s charity Spirit Aid.

Tobin was working there as a handyman using a false name, Pat McLaughlin, to hide the fact that he was still on the sex offenders’ register after being released from a 10-year sentence for rape.

David said: “I was meeting father Gerry and he asked him to bring us tea and biscuits. He was a little guy and he must have been introduced to me as Pat. He later turned out to be Tobin.”

After tea, he joined Tobin for a cigarette and a chat in the garden.

David said: “He recognised me and said how much he liked my work. He said that I had an intensity and a realism when playing bad guys, which is ironic looking back.

“He was a wee guy, very unremarkable really. He could have been your next-door neighbour, he could have been a work colleague or someone you meet in the pub and you wouldn’t think there was anything exceptional about him at all. I guess that is the case with most serial killers.

“They don’t stand out and they can blend in to humanity at large and no one bats an eyelid.”

The star was shocked when he saw Tobin’s face staring back from the pages of a newspaper following his arrest for the murder of Angelika.

“I thought ‘Oh my God, that’s that little man I chatted to and brought us cups of tea.’ It is chilling to think of it now.”

Tobin was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years for the murders of Scottish teenager Vicky Hamilton, English hitch-hiker Dinah McNicol and Angelika.

When the original idea for the documentary was pitched to David, he didn’t mention that he had met Tobin. The director nearly “leapt off his barstool” when told later.

David said: “My meeting with Tobin is not something I rush around telling people. It was an extraordinary piece of synchronicity.”

And the documentary makers uses his former connection to Tobin to publicly appeal to him to hand over the names of other women he has slaughtered.

David looks straight to camera and reaches out to Tobin.

He tells viewers: “I have it on good authority that Peter Tobin likes to watch programmes about himself on the television in his cell, so Peter, if you are watching, here is my message to you.

“Put all this conjecture to rest and tell the truth. It is time to put a lot of people out of their misery at last.”

The makers of In Search of Bible John had filmed two endings, one with the appeal and one without.

He said: ‘We thought it was worth a try if he was going to watch the film. We decided to go with it, on the off chance that he might just suddenly say it was time to tell the truth.”

Meanwhile detectives believe they have only scratched the surface of 65-year-old Tobin’s horrendous life of crime.

He bragged to a psychiatrist in jail that he had killed 48 times, then sneered: “Prove it.” A UK-wide probe, Operation Anagram, was set up.

It has also looked at possible links to the Bible John murders of Patricia Docker, 25, Jemima McDonald, 32, and Helen Puttock, 29, in 1968/69.

Tobin was living in the city when Patricia and Mima died, and could then have come back from his new home in Brighton to kill Helen.

Using graphic reconstructions and interviews with experts, the documentary charts the deaths attributed to killer Bible John.

David said he now leans towards Tobin being Bible John.

He said: “There is an uncanny resemblance. I would say I am more in the yes camp when it comes to whether Tobin is Bible John but who knows.”

He added: “Whether he is Bible John or not, there can be little doubt that there are other victims.

“How evil must you be that, once you have been caught, you still don’t give the grieving relatives of other

victims the answers they crave?”

I arrive at David Hayman's Spirit Aid office in Glasgow, soaked to the skin, having been caught in a typically traumatising Glasgow rainstorm.

I feel a little apprehensive going to meet such a renowned and respected actor, especially one infamous for playing bad guys. But the man who opens the door - a mischievous and warm man, who laughs with his eyes and swears like a trooper in a thick Glaswegian accent - is miles away from the cold, clinical, and sometimes downright cruel characters that David usually plays.

He ushers me inside out of the rain and immediately offers me a cup of tea. Then I know we're going to get on just fine.

I first saw David speak at a Q&A session following his show Six and a Tanner. Most people asked about the show, and about his acting career, but one woman asked if he would speak a little about his charity, Spirit Aid.

I like to think of myself as a fairly charitable person. I give to Comic Relief, I sponsor my friends, I attend events that support charities close to my heart. But I also pretend to be on my phone when the charity muggers descend on me on South Bridge. I watch charity campaigns on television, and respond in an essentially British way: by tutting. Every day of our lives, we are bombarded with unthinkable facts and figures about inequality and injustice. Every two seconds, a child dies of hunger. Every seventeen seconds, a child dies from lack of clean water. Two million children are sold into the sex trade every year. Every single one of these facts is unimaginable, and unbearable, but we've heard them so often that they've become meaningless. We've become desensitised.

And yet, watching David speak, many of the audience were moved to tears, myself included. The words which I had heard so often suddenly got through to me. It's hard to say what makes the difference, what makes people react like that. David acknowledges that his fame probably helps. The fact that the Q&A session is live, with a familiar and respected face creates a very specific atmosphere in which people are perhaps more receptive than they would normally be. But I think, even more important than that was the way that David spoke, and the way he made people feel. Even when speaking of injustice and cruelty, he speaks with tremendous compassion and love for humankind. Instead of making people feel guilty or ashamed, he makes them feel powerful, inspired.

When I say this to him, he looks totally delighted and claps his hands. He worries that people leave his talks feeling like he's beaten them over the head. But the shock factor is important, he says, it's important to give people a bit of a fright and to make them angry. At the moment, most people live in a bubble of apathy, and that's what's keeping us from having the world that we want. People, especially young people, need to be willing to break down the current order and rebuild our society.

He places tremendous faith in young people. We are the most valuable resource that the world holds for the future. "We do not inherit the world from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children", he says. He believes that his generation have, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked up. So now it's up to all of us to stand up for the things we believe in (kudos to everyone who has protested against £9000 fees), and create the kind of world that we want to live in.

This is a typical example of the way David addresses things. Even when talking about things that make him angry or upset, he finishes with hope. He hopes for better, and he has faith that it will come. He describes himself as "an original hippy, who still just wants to spread peace and love". This seems to be a very apt description. There is an amazing warmth in his manner; incredible empathy, understanding and love in everything he says. This, he was taught by his mother.

"My mother was an angel, barely disguised as a human", he says, his face softening into a smile. He talks of her kindness and compassion, how she always had time and made space for everyone. But mainly, he talks about her faith in the power of love, and her enduring belief that people are special, and worth taking care of.

He travels to the communities that Spirit Aid supports at least once a year, and he says that if he went there and gave every child in the community a hug, it would almost be enough. The most important thing is to show them that someone truly cares, to remind them that life is worth living.

I ask him if he can pick out a moment that he has felt especially proud of Spirit Aid, and falls silent for a moment. Then he tells a story about his time in Malawi, where they have funded a school meals programme in a high school. Attendance and student marks have shot up since this scheme was introduced, but he says the thing that made him happiest was a conversation he had with a young girl who was lying beneath a tree in the schoolyard. He went to check if anything was the matter, and she said to him "My belly is full. Now I feel safe. Now I can go to sleep", and rolled onto her back and fell asleep in the sunshine. "That's why we do this", he says, tears starting to form in his eyes, "So that wee girl can feel safe. So that wee girl can go to sleep".

I almost don't want to ask my next question, but I feel like it would be unfair not to. So I ask if there has been a time when he has been unable to help. The tears stay in his eyes, but now his face crumples in pain, and he is silent for another moment. Of course there have been times when he and his colleagues have had to make impossible decisions. He met a young boy in Sri Lanka who was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and Spirit Aid bought a machine for him to clear his lungs and keep him alive. However, the machine cost £5000, and a few years down the line, when the machine had to be replaced, Spirit Aid was short on funds, and David had to refuse.

Now it is my turn to fall silent. I cannot fathom being in that kind of situation and I don't know where I would find the strength to carry on after something like that. But you have to focus on the victories, however small. David carries the idea that every child is worth saving, and no matter how much or how little Spirit Aid affects the bigger picture, if they can keep improving the lives of individual children across the world, it is worth the struggle.

It seems fitting that our interview is taking place in the run up to Christmas, the season of love, charity and gratitude. I leave the office feeling buoyant, empowered, but most of all, thankful for all that I have. As David so eloquently put it "There but for the grace of God go I. With just 2p in your pocket, you are richer than 75% of the world's population". I go straight home and donate £10 to Spirit Aid. Not a very large sum. Certainly not a life changing sum, to me. But maybe someday soon, that £10 will help a little girl in Malawi go to sleep feeling safe. Maybe that's one more child that Spirit Aid won't have to turn down.

I hope that David's stories inspire you, the way they inspired me, and I hope that in the run up to Christmas, you find something in your life to be grateful for. And I hope that you can find it in your heart to carry out a small act of love. Whether it be donating to a charity, buying a homeless person a sandwich, or even just remembering to call your mum, do something amazing. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a very merry Christmas.

I find most interviews enjoyable. Some are hard work. Very occasionally an interview comes along that inspires me and encourages me to change my life. David Hayman was one of those, writes Matthew Amer.

It didn’t begin well. Not that this was Hayman’s fault. When it started going wrong, he was still in a rehearsal room at the Jerwood Space, polishing up his performance in the new Donmar Warehouse production of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, in which he stars opposite Jude Law and Ruth Wilson.

No, he had no idea that on one of this summer’s rare scorching hot days, I had casually sauntered half way to the interview, realised I’d forgotten my Dictaphone, run back to the office to collect it then headed into the subterranean torture sauna known as the tube to make up the time I had lost. When I arrived for the interview, I was an out-of-breath, sweaty mess, as flustered as a flock of headless chickens, and late.

Hayman, giving up his own time to talk to this be-suited puddle of unpunctual nonsense, couldn’t be nicer, and even checks to see if anyone has offered me a drink. But, as endearing as amiability is, that is not what inspired me.

As we settle into our chat about the show, Hayman’s excitement shines like a beacon. The play, he says, is a “good, old-fashioned four-act drama with a beginning, two middles and an end. The characters are not sophisticated people; they’re just ordinary working people. They’re not intellectual. They’re not cerebral. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. They spin on a sixpence. They can be angry one minute, emotional and in tears the next, happy the next. There’s no guile or sophistication about them. There’s no game playing with them, and it’s wonderful to be able to do that. You have to come at it in a different way. It’s a very physical, emotional approach to these characters. They express themselves through their bodies, through their voices, through their mannerisms and it’s great fun to be able to do that. I think Jude personifies that better than any of us. He doesn’t even walk like [his character], he doesn’t even look like him. He’s this beast. When he comes on stage, it is such a muscular, sinewy, visceral, animal presence he has. He does things with his body that you just think ‘Wow’. I think he’s going to take people’s breath away.”

"When [Jude Law] comes on stage, it is such a muscular, sinewy, visceral, animal presence he has"

If I wasn’t already struggling with my own oxygen intake, my breath may have been taken away by the sheer energy and verve with which Hayman describes the piece. He plays a seaman whose estranged daughter returns to him only to fall in love with a sailor and reveal that the safe, cared-for life her father thought she was living was distinctly less comfortable. It is, as Hayman says, a raw, emotional piece that has brought him back to the London stage for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Hayman displays more vigour than you would expect from a performer whose absence from the London stage was self-imposed because he “got very disenamoured (sic) of London audiences”. As he saw it, the capital’s auditoria were packed with other actors, agents, casting directors, directors, producers, writers and not very many members of the general public. “The theatre industry seemed to exist for itself, self-perpetuating and preaching to the converted.” At the time, Hayman was also Artistic Director of left-wing Scottish agit-prop theatre company 7:84, whose audiences, he found, were “more honest and less cynical than they seemed to be in London”.

Yet there is not the merest seasoning of cynicism or worry about his West End return. Instead, he saw the play as too good a text and too good a part to turn down, especially as it presented him with the opportunity to show another side to him than “that Glaswegian cop in an Armani suit prancing around in front of a camera,” as he refers to his recurring role as Detective Chief Superintendent Mike Walker in Lynda La Plante’s TV crime drama Trial And Retribution, a role he played between 1997 and 2009.

A decade as a TV cop, he thinks, muddies people’s minds to his credits in films such as The Jackal and The Tailor Of Panama, or his 10 years working as a classical actor with the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, performing a different production every three weeks for 10 months of the year and touring the world.

In fact, as his time with the Citz came to an end, he was approached by the Royal Shakespeare Company to play some of the Bard’s biggest roles. He turned them down. “How many people say no to Hamlet at the RSC?” he asks, without expecting an answer which, I presume, would be ‘very few’. “But I’d played it twice in my 10 years at the Citz, why would I want to come and play it for Japanese and American tourists at Stratford? That’s no disrespect to the RSC. At that time Glasgow Citz was extraordinary and innovative and we were pushing the boundaries. It was genuinely exciting. Going to see any of the RSC pieces I’d seen, they were like museum pieces dusted down. They’ve changed since those days. They definitely have. They’ve got a completely new dynamic and it’s a different ballgame. I just thought they were a bit staid and boring in those days and thought ‘How can I go from one of the most innovative theatre companies in the country, if not in Europe, and go and do a boring version of Hamlet?’ I couldn’t have done it. I would have gone crazy.”

""[Acting] made my heart sing more than anything else I’d ever attempted in my life""

This actor, who turned down one of the most prestigious theatre companies in the world, did not even begin acting until he left school. There were no school productions or after-school clubs, no trips to the theatre, bar the annual excursion to the panto that his family, who lived in the infamous Drumchapel region of Glasgow – described by fellow resident Billy Connolly as a “desert with windows” – always found money for.

The story of his move into acting, which, he says, “very few people believe”, tells of a 16-year-old Hayman, who was kicked out of school and went to work at the steelyard with his father. One evening, clad in a grease-spattered boiled suit, he hopped off the bus, strode into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and proclaimed that he wanted to be an actor. The rest, as in all the best stories, is history, though it took around 10 years and an acclaimed performance as Jimmy Boyle in TV film A Sense of Freedom for his father to fully accept his son’s decision.

“It made my heart sing more than anything else I’d ever attempted in my life,” Hayman says of his first foray into acting. When he talks about returning to the stage, I’m convinced none of that passion has been lost. “This is completely different from telly or film. It’s why I’m an actor. It’s why most actors act. Performing before a live audience is one of the greatest joys. It’s the best drug in the world. No drug can beat it. The adrenalin is pumping through you and the sense of elation when you come off and you know you’ve hit it, you’ve had the audience there and you made them laugh or cry or provoked them or challenged them in some way; that’s the life blood of any performing artist.”

Did you get a lump in your throat reading that explanation of what it is like to perform? Did your heart beat a little bit faster? In person, I did, but that’s not what inspired me either.

Many performers and celebrities attach themselves to good causes in their spare time. But Hayman, amid working and raising a family, set up his own charity, Spirit Aid, which runs humanitarian projects for children and young people across the globe.

""I think the world’s going to hell on a banana skin, faster than we can blink""

“I think the world’s going to hell on a banana skin, faster than we can blink,” Hayman begins, when I ask what drove him to take such a step. “Every two seconds, somewhere in the world, a child dies of hunger; every 17 seconds from lack of water. We go to war at the drop of a hat. The gap between rich and poor is getting greater. We’ve got child workers, child slaves, child prostitutes and child soldiers.

“The Sioux nation have a proverb that says ‘We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’. I thought ‘Okay, I’ve got three sons, what state is the world going to be in when I hand it back to my kids. Sorry guys, it’s a pile of s**t, I couldn’t really be bothered… No, you can’t do that. We, as a race, on this fragile planet, have got to the point in our evolution where we all have to become engaged in helping to create the kind of world we all said we wish to live in.

“I’m sure you would agree that you would like to live in a world of peace and of justice and of truth and safety, and health and education for our kids. If damn near 99% of six billion people on Earth want that, why don’t we have it? We don’t have it because we sit on our arses and do nothing. We wrap ourselves in bubbles of apathy and tut tut at a TV screen saying ‘Isn’t that shocking, how we can do that?’ So I decided to be more proactive and that was the genesis of Spirit Aid.”

Any thoughts that such idealism is easy for an actor with time on his hands and money from film and TV projects in his pocket should be dismissed, as setting up the charity left him bankrupt – “it’s really tough when you’ve got three kids and you nearly lose your house” – but the situations he had already seen and the projects that were already achieving kept him going. “We’re keeping thousands of kids alive every year; we’re feeding them, we’re clothing them, we’re educating them, we’re bringing safety, giving them opportunities. Once you start, you can’t stop. It’s a fantastic feeling knowing you’re making a difference.”

Now that is truly inspiring.