David comes from a milieu that is bent on perfection yet he’s wholly flawed so people enjoy that

As Cold Feet settles into a second season since its comeback, Robert Bathurst talks to Janet Christie about the enduring appeal of the drama and his character David Marsden, his plans for next year’s Edinburgh Festival and how Downton Abbey helped him lan

No, I don’t associate myself with the character at all,” says Robert Bathurst, sounding exactly like David Marsden, his character from Cold Feet. Urbane, incredibly polite, charming, yet slightly apologetic and quietly spoken, he has one of those voices that make you feel as if he is genuinely delighted to be talking to you, that you have his undivided attention. Generally cast as wellspoken and upper middle class, whether tending towards honourable or bounder, with his smart suits and slightly foppish grey hair, he puts you in mind of the upmarket lawyer he may well have been if the Cambridge Footlights hadn’t lured him from his law degree into full-time acting, or indeed of “management consultant/ investment consultant” David Marsden.

“Acting is just colouring in,” he says, “so you try to colour in as best you can, but what comes first is what the author writes. Obviously some aspects of your instinctive reactions might be your own, and then all the grace notes you find from other things go in there. But I play high and low class too, you know.”

Back on our screens last year after a 13-year gap and nearly 20 years after it first aired, Cold Feet is just as popular second time round with its cast of James Nesbitt, John Thomson, Faye Ripley, Hermione Norris, as well as Bathhurst, this time joined by Benidorm and The Loch actress Siobhan Finneran. Over six million people tuned in to the first episode of the 2016 season of the ITV drama, to see how the friends had coped with the vicissitudes of life. Older, but apparently not much wiser, they continue to marry and split up, land and lose jobs, struggle to parent and generally make a mess of things, not least Marsden. Having wound up in the criminal and divorce courts last season, he has a knack of turning his self-inflicted misfortunes around and may yet come up smiling apologetically once again.

“I love playing him,” says Bathurst, who is delighted to be back for another seven episodes of Cold Feet, reprising the role of the… what exactly is it David does again?

“Do you know, I’m not really very sure,” he says. “There was one episode where I sang a nursery song to one of my children, ‘Bye Bye Baby Bunting, daddy’s management consulting…’ so we think that was it, but I don’t really know what David does for a living. He’s sort of in the financial world...

“He was originally a sort of ex-yuppie. When we first saw him in 1996 we had been through 11 years of Maggie and he was a creation of that. Those characters aren’t meant to have a chink of humanity so you’re surprised when David does, albeit he gets it wrong. He comes from a milieu that is bent on perfection yet he’s wholly flawed so people enjoy that,” he says.

“At first you question if we’re doing it again just to fill a hole in the schedules left by Downton, you know, is it happening for the right reasons? But you realise there’s a good reason for coming back; we’ve grown older and it’s richer for the gap. And to be working with the same lot again, yes it was very warming.

“All of the characters have been affected by their experiences over the years so they’re not just flying one flag as characters, there’s more flow than that. And David is less sharp in his aspirations,” he says.

“One thing with middle age, you just think ‘oh, sod it, who cares’ about certain things, and you see them from a different angle. For David the materialistic drive is less important and the jobs aren’t there for him. Spiritually too, other things matter more and he appreciates friendship, something he’s not very good at. There’s a golden thread between those main characters, from the weight of shared history that comes from long-term friendships.”

At the end of the last series David has been released from prison after his investment advice turned out to be dubious and he’s without a home or a job. Will ex-wife Karen, who he is possibly still in love with, take him back or will he remain married to current wife Robyn, who is in the process of divorcing him?

“Yeah… I think we left it that he had left Robyn… that Robyn was… em, he’s not divorced yet, that’s right,” he says, not sounding 100 per cent sure, or perhaps trying diplomatically to avoid spoilers. “Things have moved on a bit and he gets into more pickles, scrapes, em, severe physical danger... for the best of motives. Yes... another unwise adventure.” More affairs perhaps? “The affair when he was married to Karen?” he says. “Well, that was one afternoon in a hotel and the whole world fell in on his head after that,” he says, sympathising. “That’s David’s sort of character. You step out of line a TINY bit and the whole world comes crashing down on you. You get no latitude, nobody gives you any space to misbehave. They’re straight down on you,” he says, defensive of his character, who despite his flaws, is popular. What does Bathurst see as his appeal?

“It’s always enjoyable seeing people suffer, isn’t it? And suffering at his own hand as well, because everything he does goes slightly wrong. And from his own standpoint he has always behaved TOTALLY honourably.” Even when he hasn’t... “Yes, exactly, honourably from his own viewpoint,” says Bathurst. “I’m sure Stalin believed he was behaving honourably. I think David does try and do things for the best, but he’s always getting into terrible scrapes