The Archers star reveals how Game of Thrones role left him with “agony”

Except, being The Archers, village cricket is more often the inspiration for a strong plotline. The latest involves Lawrence Harrington, chair of the rival Roserran Cricket Club, who first appeared when Lynda Snell, chair of the Ambridge Cricket Club, asked his advice after the team rose up the league.

He promptly made a pass at her, undeterred by the fact she is happily married, and horrified her with snide, implicitly racist remarks about her friends the Maliks, the newly arrived Muslim family.

Now the cricket season is in full swing, Lawrence is back. And if his distinctive voice is familiar, it’s because he’s played by Rupert Vansittart, regularly called on to play a not very nice toff. His notable roles include Lord Ashfordly in Heartbeat, MI5 boss Sir Alec Myerson in the final two series of Foyle’s War, and Lord Yohn Royce in Game of Thrones.

“You don’t think of me if you want a drug dealer in Newcastle,” he says, entirely pragmatic. “If people want me to play a man in a tweed suit throwing a tenant out of their cottage, well, why not? It’s only acting.”

And while there are pleasures to be had in TV drama – “I spent my time as Lord Ashfordly driving around gorgeous settings in Yorkshire in a Rolls-Royce” – there are downsides to TV roles, such as having to wear historic costumes. “With Game of Thrones, I tried to make the costume halfway comfortable with huge foam pads under my shoulders – the breastplate was agony.”

But there are other reasons why he’s enjoying The Archers. “Radio is you and the script. It’s elegant and straightforward, and you’re not being watched,” he says. “And I knew a lot of the cast already. I’d worked with them or met them before.”

The distinctive Vansittart voice you hear today is, he says, a reaction to changing times. “When I went to drama school I had a very public school accent. But it has toned down. That happened with a lot of people – like the [late] Queen. You can’t talk like that any more.”

A keen radio listener since he hid his transistor under the bedclothes at boarding school, Vansittart, now 67, has long been an Archers fan – not least because, having moved with his wife to the Cotswolds and found some villagers welcoming and others decidedly frosty, he knows from his own experience that it’s true to life.

But then he comes from a larger-than-life family, with links to entertainment. One grandmother was in the Ballets Russes, while other relatives worked at the BBC and as film scriptwriters. They form part of the Vansittart history, from their 12th-century origins as Dutch merchant venturers, arriving here, by way of Germany and the Baltic, in 1674.

It’s a story – all in a bound volume handed down the generations – involving rogues, illegitimate children, maidservants making good and land sell-offs to George III. It would make a rollicking family saga – and who better to play a leading, roguish role than Vansittart himself?

As to whether Lawrence is truly a cad, he says it’s up to the listeners to judge. “My job is to say the lines as well as I can. But if he’s adding a bit of spice, that’s great.”

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