Tom Watt: ‘I’m a very different character to Lofty’ [Angela Cobbinah]

EVEN after all these years, people still regularly stop Tom Watt in the street to ask after Lofty Holloway, the EastEnders character that turned him into a household name.

“It happens daily and it’s like they know me,” he says, smiling. “But it’s not an issue because it’s always friendly and we can have a laugh.”

Tom only played Lofty for three years but his role as the kindly but gullible barman at the Queen Vic, who in true EastEnders style gets jilted at the altar, riveted the nation, attracting 25 million viewers in one episode alone. Now the soap is celebrating its 40th year on the box and inevitably the spotlight’s on him again.

“I loved playing Lofty,” he says as if talking about an old friend. “He was publicised as a lovable loser but I played against that from day one because I didn’t see him that way. He had some really admirable qualities and was someone who always hoped for the best. It was also quite unusual to have a comical character who was helping to carry very dramatic storylines.”

We’re chatting in a café in Holloway Road not far from he where he once lived, and he’s looking chilled and receptive as he tells me what he’s been up to over the last few decades. I pride myself on having a firm grip on reality but for some reason I’m surprised that he’s nothing like Lofty.

“I’m a very different character to Lofty,” laughs Tom, who, though aged 68, still has a boyish, playful look about him. “I apparently made an impact in my role, with people still remembering him after 40 years, but I don’t really understand why.”

One of two sons, Tom grew up in Holloway and his parents were both teachers. (Dad Louis was headteacher of Tollington Park School and later remarried Norma Ashe, a founder of the Keskidee Centre.) He attended Hungerford primary, then Dame Alice Owens in the Angel, enjoying a typical 60s childhood – playing footie in the street, watching Arsenal at their old Gillespie Road ground and traipsing down to the Holloway Odeon.

Single-minded from the off, he always knew he wanted to be an actor but passed over theatre school to study drama at Manchester University. “I love acting but I also like all the stuff around it – I like writing, I like directing, I like film as a medium as opposed to as a job. It was more me,” he explains animatedly.

Afterwards, while doing extra work and minor parts for Granada TV, he set up a small theatre company, touring pubs, art centres and colleges with plays he’d scripted and directed. Then in 1985, he got cast as one of the leads in a pilot TV children’s comedy show. To his disappointment, it was never commissioned, so he decided to take his chances with the offer of a part in the Beeb’s fledgling soap, EastEnders, joining the likes of Leslie Grantham (“Dirty Den”) and Sue Tully (object of his unrequited love, Michelle) in episode three.

“Lofty’s character had already been written and his surname Holloway was purely coincidental. Julia Smith and Tony Holland [the show’s creators] created scripts that were fresh and always evolving, and because of that he got some really good storylines. It was brilliant.”

Nevertheless, after a year in the role, Tom was getting itchy feet and had to be persuaded to stay on for another two. “I don’t like being in a box and that’s why I left EastEnders when I did,” he tells me, taking another sip of his soft drink. “I thought if I left it any longer it would be difficult to get acting work that was different.”

For several years he earned a living as a jobbing actor, playing a variety of stage and screen roles, including Shakespeare heavyweights Richard III and Iago. But, a lifelong football fan, he ended up establishing himself as a sports writer and broadcaster, with BBC Radio London, Arsenal TV and BT Sport among his credits. This happened after he wrote the first of several books on football, The End, harking back to the days of the Arsenal terraces.

“That book was a crack in the door. I got asked to do match reports and features for the Observer, then radio and TV stations got in touch. By the late 90s, it just went a bit mad. I’m doing writing, I’m doing seven shows a week on the radio – but you just go with it.”

Tom is also a film-maker and has just seen the launch of Family Business, a short film for Islington Council about the care system from it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-child standpoint, made with the help of creative media students at City and Islington College.

“They were great,” he enthuses. “They’re not some flashy TV or film company but 17-years-olds bringing in their practical skills in a professional setting.”

It is work like this that sees him coming up to London regularly from Cheltenham, where he lives with his wife and son. A few years ago, he was twice back in Albert Square as Lofty to attend the funerals of two long-running characters and is full of praise for his successors at EastEnders, who have to compete against multiple streaming platforms for viewers: “They have to work so much harder than we did because they’re doing that many more shows per week. In my day, there weren’t so many things happening all at once. A story that might take two months happened over five months back then. It’s a lot more challenging now.”

Looking back on his eclectic career, it seems that’s just the way he wanted it. “To be honest with you, all the different things I do, I never think, ‘I’m really good at this’, I just do it,” he declares with typical modesty.

“I am aware that there are better actors than me, I’m aware there are better writers than me, I am aware there are better radio broadcasters than me, but what I don’t know is anybody who’s quite good at all of them.”