Despite his compulsive re-reading of The Chronicles of Narnia, the young Tony Slattery entertained no fanciful notions of stepping past the school blazer and assorted shirts hanging in his own bedroom cupboard into some mysterious, magical kingdom. 

"I think my wardrobe was from MFI, so the chances of an enchanted land lying behind it seemed fairly slim. Had I been able to go through the back, I'd more likely have found myself in Beirut or some other war zone," he says. 

Born 32 years ago, in north London, just seven weeks before the Fifties slipped into history, the fourth son and fifth child of Michael and Margaret Slattery remembers the atmosphere in a succession of council houses Walm Lane, NW2, followed by nearby Church Road and then a flat on the Stonebridge Estate as warm, open and unpredictable. In short, just like his parents: very Irish. 

"The Anglo-Saxon traits of reserve, stuffiness and routine didn't really exist at home," he says. "The Gaelic influence was stronger, in terms of honour, volatility, ebullience and the way in which moods could turn on a sixpence." Perhaps the very characteristics which led the adult Slattery, now a fixture on the British comedy scene, appearing in television series such as Whose Line is it Anyway?, to value social politesse so highly. But of the enduring filial bond, evidenced by a visit with his parents to Ireland last spring, there can be no doubt. 

"A lot of the old relations had been dropping off the perch, so we hired a car and I played chaperone to a kind of grand tour. We started out near Dad's place of Newmarket-on-Fergus, staying at the castle where he remembered having played and scrumped as a child. I think it was quite strange for him to find himself put up in the big rooms of a castle, in the shadow of which he had once lived. It rather set the tone for the whole trip, which was pretty emotionally charged, as Irish get-togethers so often are." 

Even as a small child, he says, he was aware of his parents' struggle to maintain a native identity while assimilating themselves into the new culture in which the post-war trawl for work had placed them. One small expression of individuality for Slattery came via the Plasticraft kits from which he would fashion lurid paperweights and jewellery, later to be sold on the factory floor by his proud father. 

"They were ghastly, horrible things, but he was obviously so proud that I was doing something enterprising. They'd go for about 25p a time, and I'd save the money to buy yet more chemicals to make yet more nasty jewellery to sell." 

A more far-reaching declaration of independence came when, aged 11, Slattery opted to attend the then all-boys Gunnersbury grammar, rather than the local secondary school where his brothers were all enrolled and to which his primary classmates were all destined. "I didn't want to spend the next six years with the people I'd spent the previous five among," he says. "And although there's a danger of being overly precious or sophisticated in retrospect, I think that came from wanting my own space and feeling the need to get a new outlook." 

The downside was a 90-minute journey to and from school each day, plus the fact that none of his new contemporaries lived within playing distance of home. "But that doesn't mean I was lonely. I don't remember ever being lonely as a child." Nor, despite the beautifully modulated peaks and cadences of his eager-anxious speech patterns in adulthood, does he think that he was already seeking to reinvent himself in upwardly mobile form. 

"The central tenets of grammar and correct speaking were drummed into us at Gunnersbury from very early on, using lots of Jesuitical tension, irony and power games. The priests and lay brothers never concerned themselves with accent, but there was a lot of importance placed on precision of speech... I think my accent today is pretty much what it always was." 

The Catholic element of this education produced what Slattery describes as the usual negative baggage, guilt, repression and so on. "But there were positive things, too," he says. "It taught me politeness and courtesy, and definitely the importance of using your brain. And thanks to the influence of my parents and of one or two particularly charismatic teachers, I also learnt to rebel against the sometimes rather sheep-like following of Irish Catholicism to understand it a bit more, questioning the theology and, if necessary, reject it as well." 

Complementing this sense of intelligent enquiry was a well-exercised talent for sarcasm and, perhaps less expected, a significant physical prowess. It was a Stonebridge friend who interested him in judo at the age of 11, leading to his representing Britain as an under-15 and achieving Black Belt status by 17. 

"It's not like the other more psychotic martial arts. There was a lot of emphasis on discipline, cleanliness and economy of action... all very polite and pure." Rugby was an enthusiasm, too, but the inability to concentrate for long confined him to the Second XV. "Often I'd just blank out and think about something else, probably The Chronicles of Narnia as the ball went whistling over my head." 

The Sixties concrete world of Stonebridge was a far cry from the fantasy of C.S.Lewis, but Slattery denies having been a conscious escapee. "Although it was a pretty rough, tough environment, my home life was happy, I was doing well at school, and had as many material comforts as my parents could afford. In no way was I a deprived child. I never once thought, 'God, I want to get out of this place'." 

A personal epiphany came, however, on a crisp spring morning when, aged 14, Slattery arrived in Cambridge on a school trip. "I just fell in love with the city a completely cliched, soppy reaction, but none the less valid for that. And I knew I wanted to spend some time there." 

He was determined to win entry to a Cambridge college, but it took the jolt of disappointing O-level results (six relatively undistinguished passes) to galvanise him into hard work. "Up until then, in the way that many teenagers do, I relied on a kind of eloquent, meandering rubbish to get me by. I just didn't do any work. Suddenly I had to really knuckle down." 

Slattery's subsequent efforts, rewarded by success in winning an exhibition prize to read modern and medieval languages at Trinity Hall, were still not totally single-minded. An interest in performing, sparked at the age of seven when he conducted the massed ranks of triangles and tambourines at a parents' night, spurred him into an assortment of roles for school productions of the classics. There were part-time jobs, too. "And the usual rather fumbling experimentation with girls." 

"I don't think I was ever loud or aggressive or indulged in any of that peer-group macho swaggering which bonds a lot of male adolescents together. I was always just terribly polite if a little sharp with my tongue." 

Despite his compulsion towards self-improvement, one senses within Slattery a parallel need to honour his background and celebrate the contribution made by his parents as he still hails them as the great loves of his life towards his later achievements. Perhaps this explains why he went on to integrate so successfully in an environment which, although deeply class-conscious, offered at last the rudiments of a meritocracy. 

"Obviously, when I got to Cambridge I was aware that Stephen and Hugh (Fry and Laurie, along with Emma Thompson, fellow members in Footlights) were toffs and had certain social graces. But it wasn't as if I were some kind of dirty scallywag in comparison.  "It wasn't at all like a Lord Snooty strip, with me going up to Cambridge in an eye-patch, striped jersey and a flat cap, and the toffs all whipping serfs and wearing monocles. I think I was amused by what I encountered, rather than envious or cowed." 

Socially adept then, as well as cerebral and physical. And with knee-jerk niceness and unfailing courtesy built in... surely this is Renaissance Man, junior model? "It was only later that the rot set in," Slattery says, giving his gentle, self-deprecating laugh. 

(This article was borrowed from Stupidgirl's site. To see more of her collection of Tony Slattery articles, visit www.tonyslattery.net)