I’ve been in some of the biggest TV shows but I really want an Aston Villa role

He's had cameos in some of the most popular shows on our tellies.

A quick glance at Nigel Boyle's impressive and extensive IMDb biography shows parts in Peep Show, The Inbetweeners, Casualty, Coronation Street and Peaky Blinders among many, many more.

Boyle was catapulted to fame with a leading role in hit BBC crime drama Line of Duty.

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No spoilers for those of you yet to work through it on iPlayer - what's taking you so long? - but there's more to the character of DSU Ian Buckells than originally meets the eye.

Yet there's two roles the Brummie actor would love to be cast in - and both involve his beloved Aston Villa.

"Maybe in a few years Big Ron would be a good one, wouldn't it?" Boyle tells our Claret & Blue podcast with a smirk. "I could put on a bit of timber, the hairline might start receding a little bit, put on some big glasses, a trench coat."

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Dean Smith would have been our bet, with the Brummie twang, the ginger colouring and the fact Boyle was brought up not far from Deano's old Great Barr stomping ground.

"Yeah, you've got to think about castability and whether I'd be convincing, so Deano would be a great shout. I didn't think about that."

The other claret and blue gig Boyle would be honoured to land one day is Villa Park stadium announcer. Russ Morris and Dave Poulton, the current matchday men with the mics, can rest easy for now. Boyle’s Equity card has been flourished so regularly during a work-packed year (including a current stage run that we'll get too soon enough) that he often has to make do with watching the mighty Villa on the box.

“Villa stadium announcer, that would be the dream,” he suggests with a grin. "I do lots of voiceover work so I reckon I’ve got the credentials for it. It'd be a great gig, I'd love that. I’m in London for a lot of my work for TV, adverts and plays and my family is based down south now so it's difficult to get up and see the Villa as much as I want to.

“I get to about six to eight home games a season and about four or five away games. I try to go to the London aways as they’re more like home games for me now. I went to Ipswich. I always try to target a new ground or go to one that I really fancy. I don’t get to see Villa as much as I’d like but if I was the stadium announcer I'd have the perfect excuse every matchday wouldn’t I?"

Boyle, actress wife Lainy, sons Finnian, 8, and Decan Sonny, 6, and daughter Cora Rose, 3, have recently relocated from central London to Hertfordshire to be closer to the in-laws. It’s helping with the work-life balance and childcare responsibilities, but the 46-year-old Villa fan finds himself slap bang in the middle of a battle for the kids’ footballing allegiances. Lainy is an Arsenal supporter and while Boyle had the bragging rights when he took her to Unai Emery’s double over the Gunners at Villa Park and the Emirates last season he is constantly reminding his impressionable offspring of the claret and blue gospel.

His own Aston Villa love affair started at primary school. The youngest of six kids from a big Irish family (three boys and three girls), his two brothers supported Birmingham City, but Begrudging Bluenose is one role the actor was never interested in playing and when a friend of his dad took him to the Villa for the first time he was hooked. His parents were publicans, running the Bale of Hay in Bartley Green and The Monarch in Quinton among other pubs before moving to St Theresa’s Irish Club in Wellington Road, Perry Barr, just up the road from the old Crown and Cushion and not far from the shadows of Villa Park.

Boyle went to St Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Bartley Green, Holy Name in Great Barr and Stuart Bathurst High School in Wednesbury before reading Business at University College Northampton. After graduating with Honours he decided business wasn't for him and he combined night classes at Birmingham School of Speech and Drama (BSSD) with working at the Reiss menswear store in Corporation Street, going on to win a scholarship for the full time post grad course at BSSD - now Birmingham Conservatoire. Before properly turning his attention to acting, however, he was acting up, living it large with his Villa mates on the Holte End as Big Ron’s swaggering class of the early 1990s (and some bottles of cheap lager) beguiled a new generation of Villa fans.

"My dad sadly passed away when I was 10 and I started doing my own thing quite a lot really,” he admits. “I was going out and getting up to all sorts as a young teenager, just going down the Villa with my mates, getting down there at half one to get your plot in the Holte End and smoking. They used to sell these bottles of Skol so I was drinking them and I thought I was the business. In the winter you'd wear your Villa top over your jumper and thought you were really cool.”

The first time Claret & Blue podcast met Boyle in person was in a kit release kickaround at Bodymoor Heath in the summer of 2017. Put on a team with Stiliyan Petrov in a five-a-side tournament in which every team had a former player ‘ringer’ he showed some nifty footwork and plenty of energy, but according to Boyle treading the boards was always a more realistic career path than kicking a ball for a living. Especially compared to his ultimate football hero.

“I was no Paul McGrath,” he laughs. “I've never been a great footballer but I played Sunday League and I always played centre half so you tend to watch players in your position. Some of the stuff I've seen him do from the Holte. Little backheels, the ball would come over the top and he'd stick his foot and flick it back to where it’d come from. He could read the game, he didn't need to run around like a headless chicken. He just knew what he was doing. Then as I got older, I loved Ian Taylor and Lee Hendrie, I thought was really good. All the usual ones, Rambo (Alan McInally) and Shaun Teale, he was hard as nails wasn't he?"

Other than a cameo in Sky’s football soap Dream Team back in 2006, sporting roles have tended to elude Boyle - until now. He’s currently starring in a new boxing play called Going for Gold at the prestigious Park Theatre, in Finsbury Park, North London. It is the fascinating story of Frankie Lucas, who won a Commonwealth Games gold medal for St Vincent after racism and corruption denied him the chance to represent Great Britain.

“He's probably the most famous boxer you've never heard of,” explains Boyle. “It’s an amazing story. My character is George Francis who was his trainer. He went on to train Frank Bruno - you can see him on the footage of that Mike Tyson fight with Bruno. When I read the script I was all over it as I was mad into boxing as a teenager and I used to box at Wednesbury ABA.When you're thinking about whether to do stuff, particularly with theatre, if it's not been done before and it's a new play that adds an extra element of excitement because you're the first one to do it and you're putting your own stamp on it.”

The play runs until November 30 before the cast and crew head to the Caribbean to perform it in Barbados for a week in early December, a privilege Boyle describes as a “right little pre-Christmas treat.” It’s not all fun in the sun, though. He won’t go all Pep Guardiola and complain about playing too many matches, but six evening shows and two matinees every week takes its toll, especially with three young kids at home.

“No actor likes doing matinees, it's really tiring but what we do for a living isn't work right, so I'd never call it hard work, but it is knackering,” he confesses. “They’re long days and you use so much energy when you're performing and you've got to match that every time. You literally get an hour off between the matinee and the evening performance. You're buzzing, but shattered at the same time. The adrenaline, it's just draining but then a couple of pints and you're all right.”

Having played coppers in Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders and This Time with Alan Partridge, a barman in The Inbetweeners, one of Jez’s sweary mates in Peep Show and a lawyer in Corrie, he has no idea what his next role will be. Having inherited his old man’s work ethic he is just keen to keep the credits rolling be it on stage or screen.

“I'm a big believer in work begets work, particularly in this business,” he adds. “It’s always good to be working. I've no doubt that something will be in the pipeline - hopefully. I've had a really busy year. I’ve been really lucky, touch wood, and flat out since April. It's tough, but I've been at it 20 odd years now so I don't know anything else.”

If ever your phone stops ringing off the hook then give us a call, Nige.

Start spreading the news… Big Ron The Musical, starring Nigel Boyle, coming soon to a theatre near you - screenplay by Claret & Blue!

You can find out more details about Boyle's latest project, Going for Gold, here.