My first London home: Roger Allam

I was born in the East End not long after the war. My father was rector of St Mary Woolnoth and we lived in a rectory in Bromley-by-Bow.

As a small boy I found the house big and scary. It was filled with people. There was my mother and father and two sisters, a curate in the flat above with his family, and a bachelor curate in the basement. So, lots of dog collars under one roof.

We left Bromley-by-Bow in 1959 and moved to a little 1920s house in Luttrell Avenue in Putney, which was a lot cosier. We later moved to a beautiful vicarage on the Broadway in Muswell Hill.

I do like churches. If I’m on holiday I’ll always go into a church. I’m what I call a cultured Christian. I used to sing in the choir in Putney and at Christ’s Hospital School.

My first home after Manchester University was a housing-association flat on Crouch Hall Road in Crouch End in 1978. I had one room, and paid £8 rent and £4 rates a week – it was very cheap.

I then shared a four-bedroom house in 1980 with my then girlfriend and two others at 52 Bouvier Road, overlooking Albany Park and cemetery. It had four bedrooms and we bought it for £25,000 and shared the mortgage. I had joined the RSC so was away quite a lot in Stratford. I had ten years with the RSC, so it was very handy when I was performing in the Barbican.

I now live in East Sheen, where I moved with my wife Rebecca 20 years ago. It’s an Edwardian terrace. The pros are that it’s near Richmond Park, the river and the Wetlands Centre, but the cons are it’s on the South Circular and under the flight path.

I love cooking and eating at home. I got into cooking in the 70s with Robert Carrier’s Great Dishes of the World. I made heart-cloggingly rich food, then got into French cooking and used to bone and stuff a duck and wrap it in pastry – which would take about two days.

Frank and Percy is the first play I’ve done in three years – which is the longest spell not doing theatre in my career. Ian McKellen is an old friend, so it’s lovely working with him. [This show has now closed].

The play does focus on old age, which makes me think about death a lot. My father died when he was just 63 and his brother died at the same age. So I’ve outlived them both so far. 

Ticket prices for the theatre are ridiculously expensive. When I started going to the National Theatre at the Old Vic, I could stand for 10p or sit for 15p.

I accepted the role of Fred Thursday in the TV series of Endeavour as I’d never played a character like that before. I did nine series over 11 years. I would have never signed up if I had known it would be that long.

My relationship with Sean Evans who plays young Morse is the closest I’ve ever had with an actor. I can’t imagine that kind of depth with anyone else.

I’d love to do another series of Murder in Provence – even though we did most of the filming in Didcot. And I’m doing another series of Conversations from a Long Marriage with Joanna Lumley for BBC Radio 4.

I don’t know about reprising The Thick of It. [Roger played MP Paul Mannion] Life is bleaker now. When it started, things were more optimistic, we were in the Blair government. There wasn’t a war in Europe and there wasn’t a cost-of-living crisis, so I don’t know where it would sit now.

I need to keep working. My two children still live at home. My younger son just finished school, and my older one is looking for work as an actor and musician.

Rebecca and I have no plans to downsize or move. I think the way house prices have risen and how they take up a much greater proportion of people’s income is a disaster. Houses have become a financial asset rather than a place to live, which is quite wrong.

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