Tom Davis on King Gary: 'It’s harsh to say racism is a working-class problem'

“I’ve always been picked on because of my size,” says Tom Davis. The co-writer and star of hit BBC One sitcom King Gary leans back in an armchair in a plush London hotel. He’s 6’ 7”, and he’s not joking. “I’ve been in so many situations across the world where people have been aggressive.” Challenging the big guy in the bar or street is “a bit of a badge of honour,” he explains, “so you end up becoming an expert in defusing it and making a joke out of the situation. Usually that means making a joke out of yourself.”

The self-deprecating humour he developed to deal with it started at school, he tells me, back when he towered over his classmates and his dyslexia contributed to disruptive behaviour. It’s not just his height that makes the 42-year-old stand out, though; Davis is a rarity these days, a working-class writer/performer who has broken through the class barrier that has come to dominate British life.

Like Only Fools and Horses creator John Sullivan, a former window-cleaner with no qualifications, and Johnny Speight of Till Death Us Do Part fame, who left school at 14, Davis has turned early failure into a successful career based solely on hard work and talent. He flunked his GCSEs, and worked on building sites before he got up the courage to try stand-up. “Quite a few times,” he says, “I turned up to open mics, and then bottled it at the last minute”. For a time, he performed in drag. “You realise what an incredible art form it is,” he says, “but, d’you know what, the hierarchies of that world and the building sites were very alike.”

Davis finally broke into TV with minor parts on shows such as Bo Selecta, and went on to star in BBC Three’s very funny cult hit, Murder in Successville, which ran from 2015 to 2017. In it, his gruff, sleazy DI Sleet would take a different celebrity under his wing each week to solve a crime. Davis excelled in its semi-improvised format, gleefully winding up the combative Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden or trying to keep a straight face with Spice Girl Emma Bunton.

Since then, he’s had a stand-out cameo in Paddington 2, starred in ITV’s spy comedy Action Team, and found the perfect niche in King Gary – set in the sort of competitive working-class cul-de-sac in outer London that Davis knows well. He plays the self-styled “King of the Crescent”, Gary King, opposite Laura Checkley as his partner Terri, in a series that warmly conjures classic comedies while building whole episodes out of suburban staples such as the planned new extension and, in the upcoming second series, skip hire.

Yet Davis doesn’t see himself as an outlier, noting that fellow Bafta winners Michaela Coel and This Country creators Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper “are all working class people, and they’ve all got their voice”. Davis and his younger sister are Londoners, but they moved around a lot with their parents – Croydon, Sutton, Clapham, Bermondsey. Their father, a mechanic, ran a garage; their mum, who recently retired, was a nurse. “There wasn’t a lot of money when we were growing up, no foreign holidays or anything like that. But work ethic was a big thing.” It’s part of what he brings to his job. “I’ve realised that nothing is ever, ever, ever given to you, you’ve got to earn it on merit.”

It’s the week after the England football team’s run to the brink of Euro 2020 glory ended in heartbreak. Davis, who watched the final with his wife and parents, is mulling over the comedown on and off the pitch. I want to know why he thinks the white working class has become identified for some with hooliganism and racism.

“I think for the majority in this country, people were enjoying this tournament for exactly what it was. The cold hard truth is that there’s a portion of this country, in a very empty way, whose first reaction is to write a Tweet or comment with a racial slur… and when you look at the people making those comments, they’re men of a certain age.

“I think that sort of narrow-minded, conceited way of looking at the world is very sad. I think it would be harsh to make it a working-class problem,” he adds, “it’s bigger than that. It’s always easy to target the working classes, but most of us were brought up in multicultural backgrounds.”

His mention of men being the problem prompts me to ask him about King Gary and masculinity; Gary talks over people, interferes and tries to dominate, albeit with limited success. “There’s a toxic masculinity there,” Davis admits, “alongside a man who loves his family. In real life, he says, “I think a lot of [behaviour like Gary’s] comes from vulnerability, from social anxiety. Once you set out your stall to be the person everyone wants to know, the loudest person, it’s very hard to continue that without becoming a caricature.”

He takes issue with those who initially thought the characters in the show were too broadly drawn. “These people exist,” he insists. “If anything, we’ve had to tone them down a bit for television.”

Are Gary and Terri, whom Davis was at pains to make hilarious in her own right (“the funniest people to be around are working-class women”), based in any way on himself or his own relationship? “I think, elements of it.” He grins. “I’d like to think I’m not Gary. And my wife would be furious if I said she was anything like Terri King. But I think the best part of their relationship, like mine and my parents’ relationships, is above all a friendship, looking forward to getting home and seeing that person at the end of a hard day’s work.”

He points to Gary’s father in the show, Big Gary, as played by The Fast Show’s Simon Day, as part of “a generation where the roles of husband and wife were set in stone – ‘I’m not going to do anything around the house. Once I retire, you’re pretty much going to look after me.’” Big Gary also consistently belittles his son. Working with other men on building sites, Davis says, he always noticed “the pressure they put on their sons. And then the pressure their sons felt to mirror that.”

He and director James De Frond, who have known each other since they were teenagers, share writing duties on the show, with the latter shaping scripts at the keyboard while Davis freeforms. “You can sit with James, and think, ‘I’m just spilling out s---, just doing different voices and different characters.’ But he gets everything down. He’s a real perfectionist with story, jokes, construction.” In the scripts are loving nods to sitcoms past, especially to Only Fools and Horses, from malapropisms – “This is exactly what I needed, just to chill and decompose,” says Terri by the pool – to tearjerkers, such as Gary’s proposal to Terri, which ended the last series.

I wonder what Davis makes of how classic comedies, from Dad’s Army to Fawlty Towers to Absolutely Fabulous, have come under fire in the era of cancel culture? “I think the conversations we’re having are bigger than just comedy,” he says. “That said, there’s a world that 10, 15, 20 years ago, wasn’t at that point… it’s hard to scrutinise someone for something they did at that time…

“But the truth of the matter is, was it right then? No, because if it caused any kind of upset, it was never right, was it?” Those rushing to defend the shows and tell people “you shouldn’t be offended by that” have got it wrong, he says. “It’s not the same, but I have it where people like to joke about my height or call me overweight. And it’s not for the person who said it or for anyone else sitting in the room to work out whether that upsets me.”

He thinks it’s possible these days to get lost in the algorithm of what comedy should be. “Comedy at its most primitive should be fun.” That’s his experience of making King Gary with a cast of “very funny people”. That’s why they’re all there, he says – “and I think that shows on screen”.

'King Gary' returns on BBC One on Friday at 9.30pm