Oi, watch my show

GUY Ritchie has a lot to answer for. Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels was a fun way to spend a couple of hours but it inspired a nasty rash of faux Cockernee that spread across much of the British entertainment industry for a couple of years. Symptoms of the disease included a vogue for ‘spiv’ gangster fashion and a tendency for even the most upper middle class of youth TV presenters to speak as though they had swallowed the Bow bells at birth.

The reverse is harder to imagine and even more ludicrous. In his own words, EastEnder Ricky Grover may have become a "luvvie" but you won’t spot him down a Stepney wine bar saying "call me Dickie" while ordering a small Cab Sav, a large G&T with ice and slice and a little bowl of herb olives. He still sounds as genuinely East End as dole fraud and cut price cigarette packs that don’t have duty paid written on them.

In the seven years since Grover last appeared at the Fringe the profile of his acting and comedy career has mushroomed. Along with stints on Red Dwarf, TV To Go and the critically panned ’Orrible with Johnny Vaughan, Grover’s most memorable part has been as Bulla, the psychotic prison inmate who dispensed scary words of wisdom on the 11 O’Clock Show.

While not nailed to the cross of a single role, there has been a degree of typecasting about the parts Grover has played but as he says, "I’m from that world myself."

Grover’s stepfather was an armed robber and his mother was a hairdresser in the East End. Reading and writing weren’t a strong point for Grover at school and he was around a number of people who at various times have helped police with their enquiries. Malcolm Hardee’s semi-autobiography, I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Brithday Cake, goes so far as to implicate Grover’s involvement in a heist that went wrong and yielded nothing more than four ham sandwiches. So was Grover a bit of a handful in his youth?

"I used to be," he says. "Let’s put it this way, I knew them people. It all come a bit of a tumble. I’ve had to move out of the East End. I used to think that I was really hard but it’s come on top now."

Other career routes have included simultaneous jobs as a ladies hairdresser and a boxer but as Grover points out there was something incongruous about putting in rollers with a black eye.

"I’ve done everything," he confirms. "I don’t even know if I’m any good at this but people aren’t telling me. I think I’m still trying to find myself to be honest with you."

One thing is for certain: Grover is a lot more sure of himself than when he first pitched up in Edinburgh. Malcolm Hardee had brought him up to appear in a triple bill at the Liquid Room. I experienced that show and I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since.

As well as Hardee, Grover was appearing with an act called The Bastard Son Of Tommy Cooper, a sword-swallower from Swansea whose real name was Sebastian. The Bastard, as Hardee referred to him, nicked himself and ended up covered in blood. The show climaxed with the venue going dark and the three performers appearing on stage wearing nothing but bin liners and luminous paint on their genitals.

"It was the worst show I’ve ever seen in my life," confirms Grover matter-of-factly. "It was diabolical."

Moving on, Grover would like to extend his serious acting and fit in a bit of comedy in between. Whatever he ends up doing it can only be more successful than his house-buying exploits. He now lives in Barnet but when he first moved out of the East End, on account of things getting a "bit naughty", he bought a thatched cottage in the country.

"I moved next door to a witch," he splutters. "F***ing form I’ve got. It’s the gospel truth. We moved to a little thatched cottage and the next door neighbour was a witch. There was a little skull in the window and everything.

"We kept on having horrible things happen, one after the other. I had a big St Bernard dog at the time. It got ill and had to be put down. I had a bulldog as well and my bulldog was terrified of her cat and that couldn’t happen. It was like being in a horror film."

Grover’s wife consulted the local milkman who told her that some people in the village wouldn’t even walk past the house. Hard as it is to believe, Grover the ex-boxer and former East End man about town, felt as though someone was putting the frighteners on him.

"It was absolutely terrifying. I used to finish at the Comedy Store at about 2am and I used to wait until it got light before I went home. After being in the country, I’ve moved back into town. I wasn’t having none of that."

Ricky Grover appears in Who’s the Guv’nor, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14), (0131-226 2151), until August 26, 10.45pm