"She said 'I have known you quite a few years and I know you have an ego, but I didn't see your ego on stage!"'

Which is exactly what the role demands...

Nathaniel, known to millions of TV viewers as Detective Inspector Thomas "Tommy" Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton, is currently the Quartermaine in question in Simon Gray's sharp-witted play - a portrayal of a man who works at a struggling school in Cambridge teaching English to foreign students, but a man who remains one of those people who never quite manage to make an impact on the people around him.

Quartermaine constantly fails to inspire his pupils. His colleagues around him lead varied and exciting lives while Quartermaine bumbles along, trying desperately to be liked and accepted.

Brighton is the last week of the tour, and it's a tour Nathaniel has thoroughly enjoyed. Surprisingly perhaps, it's been his first tour ever. He's visited Newcastle with the RSC, he's transferred to Broadway with The Merchant Of Venice - but nothing so far that could count as a tour.

Touring doesn't particularly pay is his sad conclusion; but working with a lovely company is very definitely the plus side: "We have worked really hard. We had three weeks to rehearse, which was just about enough to learn the lines in an almost formulaic way. And then you have to move on from that. You have to start inhabiting the words which takes time. The first week of the tour in Windsor was probably a dress rehearsal. I feel sorry for them there!"

But inevitably the production was still evolving, losing a quarter of an hour in running time without, curiously, losing a single line in text.

"As the director would say, you have to keep air under it. It is like a hovercraft. You can buffet and bounce off the situations, but you must never come to a standstill. You can't let the air out of the tyres, to mix a few metaphors!

"There are no jokes, but it is very very funny. You have to get a lot of humour out of it and the audience can be in hysterics, and then suddenly it is incredibly tragic in a way that works because you have buoyed the audience along."

The ending leaves the audience in silence: "And inside I am jumping up and down feeling like I have scored a goal in the cup final."
No ego on display - and delight in silence rather than instant applause: "I don't know what's happening to me!", Nathaniel laughs.

As for Lynley, it was announced last year that no more episodes would be made - an announcement which provoked plenty of public protest. Nathaniel was even asked to go across to Amsterdam to accept a petition containing thousands of signatures demanding the show come back.

No, he didn't oblige: "What would the BBC have said - 'this desperate little *!*!!!***."

Nathaniel takes the view that the series is over and that's all there is to it. It would have been nice to have had an episode rounding it off, but it's better to remark on the fact that the final two episodes topped the ratings... and then to move on.

"And when you accept that, then other opportunities come your way."

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