Gavin and Stacey star Larry Lamb became so immersed in the Tidelines Book Festival that he attended all four days, helping behind the scenes at the Harbour Arts Centre by making cups of tea for volunteers and blending into the audience at many events.
Closing night performance
On Sunday night, in front of a full house, he delivered a feast of entertainment, reflecting on his roles in classic shows such as Gavin and Stacey and EastEnders, with Taggart and Superman also on his CV. He also read a host of long-forgotten poems he had written, closing the festival in stunning style and promising he would return next year.
In conversation with arts writer and broadcaster Nicola Meighan, Larry looked back on a hugely successful career that has brought him into millions of living rooms. He reflected that he was descended from a long line of travelling showmen who owned menageries travelling the country, as revealed when he took part in the Who Do You Think You Are? TV show.
Poetry and early career
Back in 1983, he spent weeks in the tropics, got fitter than ever and stopped drinking. Over a month he penned a whole host of poems written as if he were back in his youth. He found them a couple of years ago and has read them for online posts. Writing poems helped him find his voice, and he plans to have a number published in a book.
Larry recalled how he had instantly clicked with his screen wife Alison Steadman in Gavin and Stacey, as they had worked together many years previously. A psychiatrist recently told him he was a “resilient child” who had overcome many hurdles in his childhood.
He was initially in a number of industries before becoming involved in amateur drama in Germany, North Africa, the United States and Canada, and he dumped everything to become an actor.
EastEnders and Hamlet
Asked about playing the villain Archie Mitchell in EastEnders, he said it was a bit of a laugh and the writers made him more and more bad. Being a gangster could not be further from his true personality.
There was a hugely nerve-racking moment when he played Claudius the King in Hamlet on the opening night in front of 1,300 people around 2001 with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was asked out with stage wife Gertrude in the number one play of the year among 25 actors and forgot some key lines. He was looking around for inspiration but could not find it, looked at the floor before briefly exiting stage left, coming back on and doing the whole scene again.
Larry hopes his poetry book, From Womb To Tomb, will be out next year and plans to return to the festival to promote it. A raffle at the end of the night saw seven lucky audience members given Larry’s autobiography, Mummy’s Boy, which he later autographed as part of a signing session.
Michael Pedersen appearance
On Saturday afternoon, Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen promoted his books Muckle Flugga, based on a fictional story around a lighthouse on Shetland, and Boy Friend, based on his friendship with the late Scott Hutchison, founding member of the band Frightened Rabbit.
He wrote it following a tour of the Muckle Flugga lighthouse and had done some of his writing in an observation tower in Northern Ireland, similar to the Martello tower in Dublin, setting for James Joyce classic Ulysses. His birthday is on Bloomsday, June 16, the day on which Ulysses was set, and he did a number of readings in Dublin on that day one year in the Irish capital. He also read a series of inspiring poems he had written in Saturday’s presentation.
