Meet the new Inspector Morse as he explains how he's going to play the iconic role

The Almighty would approve of Tom Chambers. He loves a trier.

While still at school at Repton in Derbyshire, Tom enrolled at the National Youth Music Theatre in the holidays before subsequently gaining a place (at the second time of trying) at the Guildford School of Acting. His end-of-term showcase resulted in his being taken on by an agent.

"But I only got two auditions in two years," he says, "one of which was for the arena tour of Bob the Builder; the other for a part in The Bill for which I needed an HGV licence. When I asked if I could wait for a proper acting job, she fired me."

He then hatched the somewhat harebrained scheme of trying to get on the Royal Variety Show. "I wrote to them saying I wanted to do a tap dance with a drum kit like Fred Astaire in Damsel in Distress and, to my surprise, they said they'd like to see me."

So, he moved back in with his parents and spent nine months perfecting the routine, keeping body and soul together working as a pizza delivery man, a barman, a window cleaner. "But then, three weeks before I was ready to show them my dance, they said they'd got everyone they needed."

Undaunted, Tom got in touch with Repton asking if he could film the routine on the stage of the school theatre during the holidays. He then sent out a thousand copies on DVD - 600 to UK producers, theatre directors, agents, casting people, 400 to America.

Just two replied. "One was from a guy who was putting together an evening on Fred and Ginger. The other was for an audition with Holby City." Sorry? A tap-dancing doctor in Holby? "Turns out they were looking for an American to play a doctor for two episodes and they'd assumed I must be a Yankee."

He duly turned up having honed his best American accent. "But, in the event, they liked me sufficiently to offer me a three-year contract as the womanising Sam Strachan. So, however many years after leaving drama school, I got my first paid professional job and all thanks to Fred Astaire." You couldn't make it up.

Tom Chambers first got the acting bug by accident. Aged 12, he was playing football in morning break at his junior school, Foremarke Hall, the feeder school for Repton. No one had auditioned for that term's play.

Recalls Tom: "The drama teacher suddenly appeared and ordered all us boys to take part in compulsory auditions which involved saying "Rhubarb" to a tune over and over for a production called Dracula Spectacular! When I was given one line to say, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. And then I got cast."

He didn't know it at the time but he'd just stumbled on his future. He's been seen on the small screen many times since. He was Max Tyler in Waterloo Road and Inspector Edgar Sullivan on and off since 2014 in Father Brown.

He appeared on stage in Top Hat and Elf and toured in Crazy for You. And he also starred in theatrical productions of Murder in the Dark and Dial M for Murder.

Which brings us neatly to Inspector Morse. Now, Tom has been chosen to bring the iconic detective to the stage for the first time ever in House of Ghosts written by Alma Cullen (a regular writer on the TV series) and Anthony Banks who directed him in Dial M for Murder.

It's a lengthy tour which runs now until next April 2026, with a break over Christmas and the new year. It's quite a daunting prospect.

"I grew up watching John Thaw," says Tom, "an amazing stoical actor who made the role his own." Thaw played Morse in 33 episodes spread over 13 years starting in 1987. So his are big shoes to fill.

"But I didn't have to think twice when I was sent the script. I humbly accepted the offer. What I'd love to do now is talk to John's widow, Sheila Hancock, about the role her husband made his own.

"I want to summon up his essence without attempting any sort of an impersonation. But I am aiming to somewhat replicate his dry sense of humour. I'm only sad that I won't get to drive that lovely old Jaguar."

He's tempted to ask Sheila to one of the performances. "But I think I'd be a bit scared knowing she was in the audience. When I was playing Fred Astaire in Top Hat in the West End, his daughter, Ava, came to see the show. I was terrified throughout that she was sitting there, cringing in the stalls.

"But she came backstage afterwards and she couldn't have been more complimentary. In fact, she invited me for tea in her London flat and it felt so good to be just one degree of separation from the great Fred himself.

"She showed me letters he'd written to her in which he confessed he found eight shows a week in the theatre utterly exhausting and couldn't wait to get back to filming.

"He was quite right, of course. You really have to look after yourself if you're performing in front of a live audience six days a week. You have to be careful what you eat, how much sleep you get, what exercise you do. You owe it to each audience who have paid good money to see you.

"But it's hard. Your adrenal glands switch on at five o'clock and don't really switch off until midnight. And that's not too helpful if you've got three kids under the age of fifteen. It also puts demands on my wife who works three days a week in the mental health department of a local grammar school."

He met Clare at Repton, the daughter of his geography teacher at junior school. She's five years younger than him. "I remember telling my mother - I must have been about 17 at the time - that this was the girl I would marry one day."

Fast forward to 2000 and Tom was flying back from Nairobi when a passenger with mental health issues stormed the cockpit causing the plane to plummet thousands of feet. "Afterwards, I was told we were just four seconds from hitting the earth."

Shocked to the core by this experience, the first person he contacted when he landed safely on terra firma was Clare, clearly someone, perhaps unwittingly, he'd been carrying in his heart. "She was going out with someone else at the time and I didn't want to break them up."

But a couple of years later, the two got together and finally married - in the Repton School chapel, as it happens - in 2008, having moved their wedding day to accommodate the final of Strictly, more of which in a moment.

They live near the Thames in Marlow ("I'm an all-year-round wild swimmer in the river") with their three children: William is 14, Olive, 11, and seven-year-old Poppy.

Does he ever suffer from flashbacks following his hair-raising flight experience? "No, although I can play the whole incident again in my head at a moment's notice. But I don't ever wake up in a cold sweat."

As Sam Strachan, Tom was something of a Lothario. Is Clare cool about watching her husband wrapped around another woman? "Oh yes, because she knows it's all make-believe and that anyway you're surrounded by a film crew. If ever I had to peck someone on the cheek, she regarded it as me kissing myself in front of a mirror."

In 2008, of course, he was wrapped around the same woman week after week. With his professional dance partner, Camilla Dallerup, he went on to lift the Strictly glitter ball which can't have done his career any harm. He laughs. "Absolutely. It really put me on the map."

It was a uniquely intense experience, he says, and the most terrifying thing he's ever done, before or since. "It gave me fifteen minutes of extreme fame. My father, Stuart, a chartered accountant, put the glitter ball in the window of his business in Matlock.

"People recognised me wherever I went. These days, it's different: people do a double-take and ask if I'm the local vet or whether we were at school together."

Asked to nominate his favourite TV crime series, he doesn't hesitate. "Oh, Line of Duty," he says, "and I've been reading that there's a chance it's coming back. I hope so. And I liked Eddie Redmayne in the remake of Day of the Jackal." On the big screen, he has an enduring affection for the Dirty Harry films which he started watching in the late 80s.

Any unfulfilled ambitions? "I've always wanted to put tap-dancing on-screen. I wrote a script about twenty years ago. Nothing doing so far but I've still got a few years left." And, in the meantime? "Honestly, I'm just happy to be employed," says a content Tom Chambers - and maybe that is the secret to a happy life.

• For tour dates and locations, visit inspectormorseonstage.com