Ryan Sampson goes through a remarkable transformation to become Plebs' gruff and dim slave, Grumio. In real life he's charming, erudite and smartly dressed. BCG caught up with him to find out what's in store for Series 2 of the award-winning sitcom...

Grumio is a wonderful character. Is he as fun to play as it looks?

I think yes and no. The no bit because it's a bit of an endurance affair: I've inadvertently created this character which is really painful. After a while I get horrible knots in my back from being in this hunched posture for ages, so I have to go for a massage!

The hotel we use when filming out in Bulgaria, if you go for a massage there it's a completely weird experience. You go up to about the 18th floor and there's a woman in this little suite playing trance music - it's really quite strange.

But I do really enjoy it, yeah. I'm one of these actors though... I can get overwrought by things and take roles really seriously. I'm an over-thinker! I'm not like "Yeah! I'm having a great time!" on set; I'm more like "Ooh, is that alright?"

Do you get recognised as Grumio much, and how insulting is it when you do?!

Not much, but when I do I'm really pleased to hear that people like the programme, but a little pissed off I look like a little scrubber!

I get some really interesting responses. A lot of people are like [he affects a Cockney accent] "Yeah mate, top lad, top lad!", all this sort of thing. And I'm thinking, "I'm glad I've been accepted into your 'lads' army', but I'm really not a 'top lad'!" It's funny doing a show where that's how it's projected.

So is Grumio's shocking bowl-cut your own actual hair?

Series 1 was my actual hair! Series 2 I managed to wangle a wig: my hair started falling off after Series 1! It was snapping and breaking off because the amount of back-combing and hairspray needed just killed all of my follicles, so I was left with this horrible rag on top of my head. I said "I can't do this again", but they were unwilling at first. I had to present them a kind of PowerPoint display saying "Look, this is how realistic a wig can be"!

But I've shot myself in the foot a bit, because now I am obsessed with it looking real, this wig. I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I don't know why I'm so fixated on it - maybe to avoid the issue of my actual performance!

As you touched upon, you film on location in Bulgaria. What's it like working out in such a different environment?

The people there are brilliant. Really brilliant, really friendly and lovely. But we are essentially like a group of people - a very small group of people - in a place that isn't really set up for having ITV2 kind of TV crews around the place! It's funny, people ask you "What's it like being in Ancient Rome?" but all I think of is being in this Soviet Bloc Eastern Europe place - that's the really unusual thing.

The people there really are lovely though, and we do get to travel around a little. I really recommend that actually, it's rather a beautiful country. Just incredible - they've some amazing places there, I don't know why people don't visit more, but it's just not a tourist destination.

There are some particular cultural differences though. In one scene this series I bare my bum and moon the camera; they were so thrown by the idea that anyone would - of their own accord - choose to expose themselves. And one of the local crew was saying to me "But ... this is embarrassing to you? Nobody else?" They don't understand the humour - it was a real, genuine, earnest concern and lack of understanding as to why you would want to do that. Really interesting.

They've not had a history and heritage of comedy - particularly embarrassment comedy - in the same way that we have...

Yeah, I think something has evolved in our cultural heritage for us to enjoy that schadenfreude thing, but that really hasn't happened for them. In fact, for me, that really is the main difference in filming overseas. Here, I'm a small, weedy comic actor. You take the piss out of yourself and that's great. Over there, there's a real attitude of [he puts on an Eastern European accent] "Why would you want to be small man? Small man is weak man. Weak man can be destroyed." There's a lot of machismo, a lot of value put on bigness and richness. That sort of thing.

A great example actually, Tom Davis was working on a remake version of Everybody Loves Raymond for another of the Eastern Bloc countries, and they were trying to explain the concept of the show to the actors. They're saying "Ray's this kind of weedy guy who has sort of failed at life but is a bit of a golden boy to his family; and his brother is this tall odd-ball..." And the man who's playing the brother just goes "I will not be odd. I am a big man. I am proud of this." There's a block of "Why would I laugh at myself?"

For a shorter actor like myself, there's a vague feeling of being 14 in the school changing rooms again!

You've brilliant on-screen chemistry with Joel Fry and Tom Rosenthal. Did you know them before the show? It looks like you must now be good friends.

No, I didn't know them before the show, but we've become a sort of familial unit of sorts. When you're stuck in the trenches like that - because it really is intense; of all the jobs I've ever done, it's the most 'in-deep', you're there for so long - you develop a family kind of relationship. A really strange bond develops between you all. But it's good, and yeah we're very close now.

As it's been so well received, is it at all frustrating Plebs is over on ITV2 rather than ITV itself?

I really don't think so, no. What they're planning with ITV2 at the moment is really exciting. The channel's being shaken up with the launch of new channels ITV Encore and ITV Be, so they're being really savvy and turning ITV2 into, well, kind of like E4 was a few years ago when it was at its best. That's the direction it's going in. And I'm quite impressed with how they're doing that. A couple of years ago you wouldn't have expected it. But with moving The Job Lot to ITV2 and commissioning a whole load of other new comedies for the channel, it's going to be really interesting.

You seem to have a particular skill for comic acting; is that where you'd like to see your career going?

Largely! I'm about to start something that's a bit more straight: an action programme for Sky called Strike Back, so I'm having a little bash at trying to remember how notto pull stupid faces. We'll so how that goes down!

But I think largely, yeah, I do like comedy more. I don't really know why. And of course not being, kind of, leading man stature, you do have to pitch yourself to roles you're suited. Put on the wig and do the faces!

Your first big TV role was alongside Nicholas Lyndhurst and Celia Imrie in the BBC One sitcom After You've Gone, but have largely been off-screen since that ended. Have you been doing a lot of stage work?

Yes, and I've just recently finished a musical that went on for about 14 years, it felt like! I think I've done that for a bit and now I want to go back into doing lots more telly.

You appeared alongside some fantastic female actors in Up The Women - a new series of that is coming up?

Yeah - well, it's strange what they're doing with that. The three episodes we did in 2013 are sort of an extended pilot, so this'll be our first series, which'll be shown on BBC Two rather than BBC Four, I think early in the new year. I'm quite excited about that really because it's not quite like much stuff that's out there really. It's kind of offbeat, and with the studio audience it has that warmth to it, but it's still this curiously offbeat comedy. I can't wait to see how it turns out. And I get to wear a nice suit and look good for a change!

You were also in The Work Experience, which was quite an interesting programme. Quite a lot of improvising rather than working to a script...

Yeah, a lot of improvising. I love that programme so much. Making that was one of the most fun things I've ever done in my whole life. So weird. By the end of it it was easier to keep being Shussi than it was to be myself.

This really odd thing happened that no one had accounted for: when you an improvised programme that's set in a workplace with real people as stooges, you've got this problem where you have to arrive at work already in character. But then you realise you could run into them at any point on the journey, so really you have to leave your house in character. And then if you're doing that, you have to have all the clothes that the character wears, for the entire 8 weeks of filming, at your own house. So then your house becomes part of the character.

It's really odd. You can't stop it, the line between your life and theirs disappears. I just ended up turning into this vile fashionista! It was really weird but I'm really glad actually, because it gave me a new way of going about creating a character. I want to work more like that in the future. I want to do more of these very improvised, very character-led comedies.

A very inspiring experience then!

Absolutely. You have to be really brave. You're going to places where no one's told what the set-up is, people take you at face value. You're going into work-places and all sorts. At one point I had to talk to actual policemen in character! REALLY odd. It plays with all your neuroses as an actor, and all of your instincts are really switched on so you can be much more funny and weird.

I think that's why the likes of Kayvan Novak and Sacha Baron Cohen, when you read into them, they talk about how it excites them. It forces you into the character in such a way... there's no get-out. You have to keep going and just be more extreme and judge peoples' reactions.

Did you always see yourself as an actor?

No! When I was 16 I thought I was going to be Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but then I met him in a book shop on Charing Cross Road and he wasn't quite as I'd imagined! So then I thought, no, I'm not going to be you... I think I just wanted to dress up with big frilly sleeves and go and ruin peoples' houses! I don't really know where all that came from. I watched a lot of Changing Rooms, that was basically all that was on TV in the late 90s... Ha ha!

Who've become your acting heroes and inspirations since then?

Well funnily enough, Tim Key, who is in one of the episodes of Plebs Series 2, I saw him in Edinburgh many years ago and he was amazing. He's kind of brilliant. He has this really odd, fluid style where he's not really delivering punchlines necessarily, and he's not ... well it's sort of counter-intuitive, he's the opposite to the showy kind of performer and his style's so low-key, but I really appreciate that and working with him was really interesting. You go "Oh, that's a good way of doing things." He's so fluid and open - and it's not that he's unprepared, it's just that it's very ... responsive, I guess. So watching him do things is quite a lesson, in a way. Watch out for that episode of Plebs!

So what're your favourite comedies?

My favourite sitcom of all time has to be Spaced. I know it's not a terribly original answer, but I really like warm, big-hearted, embracing and silly comedies and I want to see more of them on TV. And that is one. I don't really like the exclusive, cold, awkward comedy that's been so prevalent in the past few years. I prefer silly, big-hearted things where you feel you want to be part of their world and know these people.

I don't say that to the exclusion of comedy being dark, because Spaced could be, well, not 'edgy' exactly, but certainly weird; the same way Nighty Night had such silliness but could also be really dark.

And at the moment I'm actually watching all of the Seinfelds - I've never seen it before, so I thought I should give myself an education!

Plebs is on ITV2 on Monday nights at 10pm.