Larry Lamb has moved back in with his former partner Clare Burt years after their separation, although the Gavin & Stacey actor said they are now living together as friends.
Lamb, 78, and Burt, with whom he has two daughters, resumed sharing a home after spending around seven or eight years apart. Their split became public in 2016.
Speaking on the Rosebud podcast with Gyles Brandreth, Lamb said: “Having lived with the mother of my two daughters for 15 years, then being separated for about seven or eight, nine years, we finally finished up under the same roof. Having a really pally life.”
When asked whether they had reunited romantically, he replied: “We live together as friends… literally as friends. And I can really, really recommend it after living through the first episode of it.”
Lamb, who played Mick Shipman in the BBC comedy, added of Burt: “[She’s] a really extraordinary woman, because putting up with somebody like me is not easy.”
The actor divides his time between north London and a converted barn he owns in Normandy, France, but did not say where he and Burt are now living.
Burt, whose television credits include The Bill and Top Boy, was with Lamb for around two decades. The couple have daughters Eloise, 26, and Eva, 23.
Lamb has previously spoken warmly about Burt, crediting her with helping him secure the role of Mick Shipman after his first audition failed to impress director Christine Gernon.
He said Burt advised him to stop trying to “act” as Mick and instead play the character as himself, an approach he followed at his second audition.
Lamb also reflected on his relationships during the podcast, saying he had been quick to fall in love and had often been the one to end things.
“A friendly female glance could set me off to fall in love again. Like to dance? Let’s get married. What’s your name? Just like that,” he said.
He acknowledged that he had repeatedly looked for faults in his partners. “It just wouldn’t hold. I was always looking for fault,” he said. “That’s the problem. And so it would never hold together, but not because of them, because of me.”
Lamb has been married three times and has had four other long-term relationships. When those relationships were described as “wife substitutes”, he replied: “Seven marriages. Seven marriages.”
He clarified: “Three official and four extending for anything from three to fifteen years.”
Lamb’s first marriage was to Anita Wisbey, with whom he had daughter Vanessa. He later married American nurse Jacquie Parris and then Scottish entrepreneur Linda Martin in 1979. He and Martin divorced in 1996 and share television presenter son George, 46.
After separating from Burt, Lamb had a relationship with French artist Marie Hugo. Last October, he described himself as “a happily single man”, saying: “I’m just an old bachelor boy. It’s too late for the ladies, those days are happily over.”
