COPALOAD OFWHAT POLICE OFFICERS REALLY THINK

including two mums who dialled 999 to have officers tackle an argument between their four year-olds. That fateful night tackling the domestic made up his mind to try acting. The next day he joined the Dundee Operatic Society. Within two years, he had been cast in numerous stage plays at amateur and semi-professional level. At 30 he started at the RSAMD – now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – and, shortly after graduating, won a part in the acclaimed Black Watch, joining the play on a run in New York. Adam has also just finished playing the train guard in theatrical phenomenon, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London’s west end. He said: “It was a huge, sprawling machine. I loved it. To Harry Potter’s fan base, it is a huge deal. When you left the stage door, there were queues upon queues of people all the way round the theatre wanting to speak to the cast.” Adam even has his own dedicated Twitter fan club. When he first discovered it, he thought it was a prank by a mate from Black Watch and his reaction to posts was colourful, until he realised it was for real and he was in danger of offending a host of genuine Harry Potter fans. But he said: ”Black Watch is still the best show I’ve ever been involved in. I was in second year at drama school when I first saw it and I heard the east coast accents and thought, ‘That’s just like listening to my pals.’ I had never had that in theatre. I fell in love with it.”

He got involved in writing after watching cop shows.

He said: “I felt because I had worn the uniform, I knew how cops spoke and I felt there was a lot missing from the characters. They were always speaking in statutes. Cops don’t speak like that together.”

He wrote a series, The Job, which the BBC commissioned and it was in the pipeline for two years but there was pressure to move it from its Dundee setting to England.

Adam said: “Everything I write, I want it shot in Scotland because that’s where it is set.

“I took a step back from doing the series because it was becoming a cliché cop show.”

In Stand By, officers have been called to a domestic dispute which may turn violent. They are in the “pressure cooker” of a riot van, waiting to enter a flat where a man is wielding a samurai sword.

We wait with them, experiencing the relationships forged through the stress of the job.

Adam said: “It allows the public to have a sneaky glimpse into the job. Something which they may feel they know but don’t.” Stand By is at the Army Reserve Centre, 89 East Claremont St, Edinburgh, August 11 to 26.