Posh 'Hugo' a Black Country lad

One of Britain's best-loved actors who specialises in upper-crust roles is a Black Country lad. Peter Rhodes talks to Bilston's own James Fleet.

He's best known as nice-but-dim Hugo in The Vicar of Dibley and as nice-but-dim Tom in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

If anyone has cornered the market in not very bright chaps with a silver spoon in the mouth, it is James Fleet.

So it comes as a surprise to learn that the 57-year-old actor with the upper-crust manners comes from a humble terraced street in Bilston.

His dad was a toolmaker, his mother a cleaner. And when he opens by saying: "I really am very pleased to be talking to the Express & Star," you know it comes from the heart . This is an actor who grew up with the E&S in the front room.

James was born at No 6 Nelson Avenue and attended Ettingshall Junior School until he was 10. And then his father, Jim Fleet, who suffered from muscular dystrophy died, aged just 49.

James cannot remember his father out of his wheelchair. He describes the disease as "a terrible curse" but does not recall his father ever complaining.

To bereavement was added uprooting. James's mother, Chrissie, decided to return to her native Scotland. Because of the different school year north of the border, the 10-year-old found himself one of the youngest and smallest in his class, a Sassenach with a Black Country accent.

"I always enjoyed football at Bilston," the actor recalls wistfully at his temporary home in Stratford where he is starring in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night.

"But at the new school, I was playing with bigger boys and I got a bit of an inferiority complex. I didn't like that."

Today, he says, he feels at home neither in Scotland nor the Black Country.

He is "immensely proud" to come from this big, noisy, industrialised area but does not feel part of it.

As he put it in an earlier interview: "I see the factories and canals and football and it feels as if it should be me, but it's not quite."

There is a long, thoughtful pause.

"Isn't it strange?" he says. "It is only on mature reflection that you realise that you have these big scars that you carry through life; losing my father, moving home."

Has he ever been back to Nelson Avenue?

"No, or at least not inside the house. My mother died last year but about 10 years ago we did go back to Bilston. I asked her if she wanted to stop and knock on the door. She said no, but as we drove off, I felt that she had wanted to."

After school he studied engineering at university then trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

In this production, James Fleet plays Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the hopeless suitor of the beautiful Olivia in Twelfth Night. Another nice-but-dim performance?

"Not really. Aguecheek is usually played as a rather wimpy little character with a balloon on a stick.

"But I'm doing him as a braggart who's always looking for a fight, even though he is a coward. I think the lines work better that way."

His partner in tomfoolery is Sir Toby Belch, played by Richard McCabe.

The sour old steward of the house, the much-tormented Malvolio, is played by Richard Wilson, best known as Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave. Wilson is making his RSC and Shakespeare debut .

"It is a very happy production with some fabulous music ," says James. "It's a wonderful show, especially for anyone who's having trouble with Shakespeare and wants to get into it."

Although James Fleet has played Stratford before, this is his first time at the Courtyard Theatre, built as a temporary measure while the grand new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, due to open in 2011, is under construction.

"The Courtyard is amazing," he says. "I think it's the best theatre I have ever been in. It's like being in Shakespeare's Globe and all the hairs on the back of your neck stand up."

James Fleet has a long and varied career. He played Frederick Dorrit in the BBC's recent adaptation of Little Dorrit, Kevin's dad in Kevin and Perry the Movie, the prime minister in Crossing the Floor, and John Dashwood in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility.

"But I've never played the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton," he says.

And will he be laying those old ghosts and re-visiting his birthplace in Nelson Avenue?

"Oh, no. I couldn't do it now. I wouldn't know what to say."

* Twelfth Night, directed by Gregory Doran, is at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford until November 21. RSC ticket hotline: 0844 800 1110