One of the first TV Treasures I detailed was Alison Steadman and now he’s joined by Roger Sloman, her co-star in Mike Leigh’s 1976 Play For Today, Nuts in May It chronicled the increasingly fraught camping weekend of middle-class nature-loving couple Keith and Candice-Marie and, for me, Roger Sloman’s performance as the irritatingly controlling Keith was a revelation. What’s more, for weeks it was hard to finish a meal without recalling the ‘chewing 72 times’ mantra, so hilariously challenged by the childlike innocent played by Steadman! His banjo-accompanied folk ditty was also delightfully excruciating but he was usually relegated to backing vocals when amongst the supporting cast of early ‘80s sketch comedy A Kick Up the 80s. Tracey Ullman and Robbie Coltrane tended to bag the main parts but when the script demanded a prematurely-balding officious Establishment figure, Roger Sloman was perfectly cast. And this reputation has stayed with him for years.
I’m pretty certain I was amongst the audience for the introductory episodes of the BBC’s groundbreaking school-set soap, Grange Hill in 1978. While most of my contemporaries were focussing on the antics of Tucker et al, it didn’t escape my attention that the dapper PE teacher with a penchant for punctuality, Mr Foster, was played by Sloman.
With his shiny hairless pate and boggly eyes, he appeared older than his actual age. Consequently, despite being in his early thirties, Roger was usually cast as older men. He was an irritated dog owner in an early episode of All Creatures Great and Small and the nasty TV licence officer Mr Bastard in The Young Ones, in which he showed he could do physical comedy, too. He was back with Rik and Ade in the Nineties sitcom Bottom as the grocer desperate enough to ask the lead characters to mind his shop, and even made a fleeting appearance in the classic Christmas special, Holy.
There have been other, more conventional situation comedy roles. I remember nothing about the 1981 series Coming Home, but my diary records that Roger Sloman “rescued” it! He was in a 2014 Inside No. 9 and back in over-zealous man-from-the-council mode getting punched from Roger Lloyd Pack in The Vicar of Dibley. Leave the poor man alone, Neville; he’s just doing his job!
I can’t find any clips but I’d be surprised had I missed watching with relish his guest parts in 1990s dramas Bergerac (as Jim’s boss Inspector Deffand), Cracker, Lovejoy and Wycliffe and he appeared in the enjoyable 1982 run of thriller Bird of Prey. However, for fans of EastEnders, he may be best known as undertaker Les Coker, a regular character earlier this decade.
By this time I was no longer a regular viewer but did happen to see Roger Sloman’s distinctive face and gawky frame in one scene. A few minutes later, there he was again, only in a dress and make-up. As an actor of forty years’ standing, it was probably his first role as a transvestite and it certainly surprised me!
At least it demonstrated to me that Roger is more than just a bald head and that wonderfully whiny voice, but he will live on forever as the camping control freak Keith from Nuts in May whose sayings have stayed with me for forty-four years and counting.
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