'HELL-O, it's Roger Allam here." Even without the introduction, the voice on the telephone, rich and yummy as millionaire's shortbread, would be immediately recognisable as belonging to one of Britain's best-kept acting secrets.
As even a fan website acknowledges, Allam "is one of those actors who seems to be in a lot of things but no-one really seems to know who he is".
For starters, he has played a Tory MP in TV's The Thick of It, an adviser to Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, a writer in Tamara Drewe and a private secretary in The Queen with Helen Mirren. And let us only touch on the theatre career of this triple Olivier winner: Les Miserables, Privates on Parade, Afterlife, Money, Blackbird in Edinburgh and Falstaff at the Globe. Then there's the radio work.
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