Harman was eight when, while at the Alexander Academy of Dance and Drama in Croydon, London, the principal introduced him to an agent who took him on.
“My mum and I made a pact that we would go to six auditions,” he said, “and the sixth one was an OXO advert, which I got.
“That was it really and I’ve been doing this ever since, I don’t think there’s been a year since I was eight that I haven’t worked.”
But he has not been in a professional panto since he was 11 when he appeared as one of the Babes in the Wood at the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon, where Richard Briers played the dame.
But, he said, it was his father who was the main pantomime influence.
“He loved panto,” he said, “and we’d see three, four, sometimes five a year, and then he would write and direct them in the local village hall and I’d be in them growing up.
“Every year I did panto at the Woldingham Village Hall in Surrey, playing anything from Humpty Dumpty to Simple Simon to whatever [role] needed to be filled.
“So I’m no stranger to it at all but this is the first time someone’s paid me to do panto as an adult.”