 He appeared in pantomime and rep in Bournemouth, Farnham, Leatherhead and Windsor and he spent one season at the Chichester Festival Theatre.He then decided to enrol at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) where he spent three years and won the Forsyth Award.Whilst still at drama school he made his West End stage acting début in 1972 at the Cambridge Theatre as Private Broughton in R. C. Sherriff's "Journey's End" and then returned to the Chichester Festival Theatre and appeared in four plays there.