Tom Chambers: I went from winning Strictly to driving lorries

In our How I Manage My Money series we aim to find out how people are spending, saving and investing to meet their costs and achieve their goals. This week, actor and Strictly Come Dancing winner Tom Chambers, 49, tells us about spending six years trying to land his first proper acting job, making a £625,000 profit on a flat in Brixton and why he would rather spend £500 on a sheepskin coat than buy an overpriced Coke. What was money like in your household growing up? My dad was a chartered accountant. I was always very aware of budgeting and about the balance of work hard, get some money, and don’t just flit it all away. We were very frugal. He was very strict about what you could claim as a work expense, and this rubbed off on me. He said: “Look, if you want to put something against tax, if you want to put in an expense, you can only do it if you could stand up in court, put your hand on your heart, and tell the judge it was 100 per cent for the purposes of your work.” We were comfortable growing up, but we didn’t splash the cash. We had a beaten-up Land Rover and an old Mercedes G-Wagon, but it wasn’t like the flashy ones you see nowadays. We went on holiday to Burgh Island in Devon and drove down to the Costa Brava in Spain occasionally. My grandfather had been a fruit and veg seller in Sheffield before he started making sweets and chocolate. He did well, and my mum eventually earned a bit more than my dad through this business, even though my dad was working flat out.How long did it take you to make a living from acting? A very long time. I graduated from drama school in 1999, but my first proper acting job didn’t come until 2005, when I got Holby City. I’d been out of drama school for two years and my agent had fired me for not accepting a role as an extra in the Bob the Builder arena tour. I said, “Can I wait?” She said, “No, because I work on commission. I can’t afford to lose that commission, so you’re fired.” I was doing fringe theatre, but it was hardly lucrative. We did Journey’s End at St Pancras, and I wrote 180 letters to agents asking them to come and see us. There was actually only one person in the audience one night – who wasn’t even an agent. And then I looked through the curtain, and they were asleep. I also got a parking ticket after doing a fringe job in Leatherhead, which cancelled out what I earned. Eventually, I spent nine months putting together a tap-dancing routine with a drum kit for the Royal Variety Show. I spent 5,000 hours working on it, got factories involved and had the whole thing filmed. Then they told me they were full and I couldn’t perform. So, I sent out 1,000 copies of the video, 400 to America and 600 in the UK. It cost me an absolute bomb. Two people responded, and one of them was Holby City. They were looking for an American doctor for two episodes. Because there was no dialogue in my video and it was black-and-white tap dancing, they thought I must be American. That’s how I got in the room. What’s the best investment you’ve ever made? Definitely my flat in Brixton, London. I bought it in 2005 for £325,000 and sold it in 2019 for £950,000. It was a very strange penthouse in an old, converted school. The shower was in the living room upstairs, and it was one bedroom, but they’d tried to make it into two by putting a tiny partition wall in. The other room was in a little turret. He is currently starring in BBC series Father Brown Nobody wanted it, so I got £125,000 off the price. Nobody could see that as soon as you put furniture in, actually you can make it work. Are you a saver or a spender? I’m very much a saver, thanks to my dad. He was always reminding me that I was going to have a tax bill, so I needed to plan for it. It is a case of thirds: so, save a third, use a third for all the bills, and invest a third. I am also someone who will save on the smallest things but spend a lot on something that I use every day. I won’t buy a Coke at a motorway service station but I would spend an insane amount of money on a front door because you use it every flipping day. My guilty pleasure is occasionally treating myself to a coffee, which is ridiculous. It’s £4.15. What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve bought? A sheepskin coat from Diesel. It was £500 and looked like the character Biggles. But now I wear it and people think actually that’s pretty cool. I’ve developed a habit of treating myself to one luxury item per job, particularly if it’s a demanding theatre production. One of them was a portable steam room, which was only £88 off Amazon. It looks like a tiny little TARDIS, and you sit in it for 10 or 15 minutes. When you’re working hard, away from home and away from your family, you’ve got to keep the soul alive. What was it like winning Strictly in 2008? People would knock on my windows in the street when I was in my car after I won. It’s not like that anymore and I’m glad of it. Do you feel pressure to maintain a certain lifestyle? Absolutely not. In fact, I worked as a HGV driver during Covid. I actually don’t care about money at all. I appreciate what money can do. I appreciate the experience it can give you, but I don’t care for it. I don’t care because actually I can live off very little. I don’t really go out. I just like to concentrate on the work. Do the work to the best of your ability. Turn up to all the things you’ve got to do and then go home. Do you have a pension, and what are your plans for retirement? Yes, I do have a pension. Thankfully, Equity [a trade union] has introduced a pension scheme, where you put in a little bit, and the producer matches it. It sort of scares me, though. Just the word pension scares me a little bit. As for retirement, I don’t want to retire. Bruce Forsyth always said, “If I rest, I rust”. The moment you try, you’re going to conk out. Susie Blake, an actress who I’ve worked with, is 76 and she behaves like she’s 36. You are an energy, not a number. Tom Chambers stars alongside Giovanna Fletcher in the UK tour of Before I Go to Sleep, based on the bestselling novel by S. J. Watson, opening in January 2027. For tickets and further information, visit beforeigotosleepplay.com. He is also starring in BBC’s Father Brown.