EastEnders’ Larry Lamb is vying for boos as the villain in Fairfield Halls’ Aladdin. He tells Matthew Jenkin about his new found love for pantomime.

LIKE stockings and Rudolph, pantomime has become synonymous with the Christmas season. But for EastEnders actor Larry Lamb, who terrorised Albert Square as villain Archie Mitchell, the theatrical genre was, until recently, as alien a Yuletide tradition as the festive defecating “caganer” gnome, beloved by the scatological children of Barcelona.

“I’d never been to a pantomime until I was in one last year. It’s something I didn’t know about,” the 63-year-old admits.

He may be a latecomer to the scene, but he’s relishing the chance to have a little fun on stage for a change, playing the wicked Abanazar in Croydon’s Fairfield Halls panto Aladdin.

Lamb explained: “In comparison to doing serious theatre, it’s like having a kick about instead of playing a proper game.

“It’s so unpretentious and all about entertaining people who’ve come out for a good time, instead of sitting there judging the performance.

“That’s what I like about it. You don’t feel you’re on trial.”

The role will once again build on Lamb’s reputation for playing baddies.

But while Aladdin’s evil nemesis is based purely on fiction, his portrayal of the intimidating patriarch in EastEnders was based in part on his own family upbringing.

“Certainly the dark side of Archie Mitchell came from him,” Lamb says of his father Ron.

“Archie's a pretty stock, Victorian father figure, with an ‘I know best’ attitude.”

In contrast, as Gavin and Stacey’s Mick Shipman, he embodies the sort of laid-back, loving dad every kid wants to cuddle up with on the sofa.

After pausing for thought, Lamb revealed: “I think Mick is, somehow, deep inside me, the father I realise mine could have been,”

“But because my dad had never been fathered properly, he didn’t know how to be that man.

“He wasn’t a nasty guy all the time. He’d just been badly handled as a boy. He had a loving mother but a demented drinker of a father.”

Lamb left home aged 20, with little money and even less qualifications.

Travelling the world, he ploughed his way through a number of jobs before eventually developing a love for the dramatic arts.

It’s a fate which Lamb believes was written in the stars after tracing his family tree on the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are?

He was thrilled to discover he descends from a family of showmen who were relatively famous on the fairground circuit in the early 20th century.

He said: “It was all a huge surprise to find out I was genetically programmed to be in showbusiness.

“It was the realisation this wasn’t all an accident and there was something in there which was very likely going to happen because of who I was.

“Now I know who I am, it’s no surprise.”

Aladdin runs at Fairfield Halls from December 2 to January 2. To book tickets, call 020 8688 9291 or visit fairfield.co.uk