An Evening With Oscar Wilde (and a Certain Rob Titchener)

Timothy Watson is the gorgeous-voiced actor who’ll be appearing at Chipping Campden Literature Festival this month. He’s a familiar figure from film, from TV screens and theatre, and from Radio 4 plays. And Katie Jarvis might just get round to asking him about his most famous role to date – as the Archers’ arch-villain, Rob Titchener.

- Katie Jarvis

Timothy Watson has one of those – oomph! - gorgeously distinctive voices that stops you in your tracks. (Well, me in mine, anyhow.) Could be you’ve heard him doing a Radio 4 play; could be on a video game (the role-call of stars on video games is stellar – scroll to the credits and be amazed). Could be on film, stage or TV.

Or it could just be you’ve heard him playing the Archers’ arch-enemy *cue booing* Rob Titchener.

Aha! The dreaded Rob Titchener. Hold that thought.

Right at this moment, his voice is having an effect on me. And on Stanley, too.

“I’ll lower my voice,” Tim says, discreetly, as over the phone-waves comes the sound of impatient barking.

Stanley is an eight-week-old whippet, who has brought to the Watson household (Tim, Helen, plus children aged six and 12) the kind of unalloyed joy Archers fans felt when they heard that woman-abuser Rob Titchener was finally buzzing off to the States. (The States? No comment.)

“My wife [the actress Helen Grace] was begging to get a cat; we had two who’ve both passed. I said, ‘If there’s to be another pet, it has to be a dog!’; so we’ve compromised in as much as a whippet is as like a cat as a dog can be. They just want to snuggle up on the sofa.”

Err. Aren’t they pretty nippy, though, too? “I’m already getting tiny glimpses of the turn of speed and bursts of acceleration,” he says, ruefully.

Their older dog, Biddy, (the two are collectively known as the Baxters. Clearly.) is the best natured Labradoodle in the world. “Her favourite thing is to go down to the beach at West Wittering and to find another running dog – a whippet or a greyhound – and just set off until she can’t keep up.

“So we got Stanley to try and keep her fit and well for as long as possible.”