KATHERINE MACALISTER speaks to sitcom stalwart Matthew Cottle about his latest theatre role.

It wasn’t the most auspicious of starts when I asked Matthew Cottle how rehearsals for the new Alan Ayckbourn play Neighbourhood Watch were going.

“Well we’ve been doing the play since August, including a five-week run in New York, so it’s all been very exciting thanks,” was his charming reply. “140 performances altogether, 70 to go.”

A week at Oxford Playhouse from Monday will take up seven of them, in which Matthew plays a middle-aged Christian who moves into a new estate with his wife.

“They are good-hearted people who start up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme at a housewarming party. They have good intentions but it spirals and goes to my head, although all the way through I’m trying to do the right thing,” Matthew explains.

It’s Ayckbourn’s 75th play, billed as ‘an hilarious cautionary tale of the dangers of taking the law into your own hands’. As well as receiving great reviews, it was also taken to the New York Off Broadway Festival.

Matthew, 45, smiles: “They did have a very different reaction to some of the jokes over there, and there were some tumbleweed moments, because the Americans take things a bit more seriously than the English, who just go with it. But having said that, by the end they were lapping it up.

“And my family came out and loved the shopping and we did all the touristy things that we never have time to do.

“But five weeks was enough. I got quite claustrophobic and spent a lot of time in Central Park. New York got a bit overcrowded and oppressive for me.”

You’ll recognise Matthew from TV shows such as Game On with Samantha Janus, and Drop The Dead Donkey, to name but a few.

“Game On is the show I am always linked to and it was fun and we made strong bonds. I speak to Sam occasionally and we were talking about a one-off Game On reunion. I would love it.”

So was such early success hard to sustain? “Well everything seemed to happen at the same time for me,” he says. “I left RADA and then was in three sitcoms for the BBC at the same time, and it was all going terribly well. Then I spent a year in theatre and when I came back things had changed.”

Still, being in the latest Ayckbourn is quite a coup. “I have noticed that Richard Briers plays the original role in many of the scripts I’m given,” he laughs.

“So I think I have an everyman-like ability – you know the type, sits at home on the sofa in a comfortable jumper, non-threatening, but if it means I get cast...” he tails off.

“But I rarely play monsters, although I like to think I can be different because it’s nice being mean.

“So in Neighbourhood Watch, at least I get to grow and change and become power hungry – I don’t become very likeable. But you have to put a lot of yourself into the role if you’re going to pull it off.”

So did Matthew immediately take to the script?

“I enjoy Ayckbourn’s stuff and people identify with his characters and always enjoy it. And the audience has been brilliant.

“And as for the rehearsals you were mentioning, we did them in Alan’s house in Scarborough by the sea, and he took us out for dinner and we swam in his pool....”

It’s a hard life.

* Neighbourhood Watch opens on Monday at Oxford Playhouse. Call the ticket office on 01865 305305 or book online at oxfordplayhouse.com