Mr. Alf Editor of the Evening Pulpit Rob Brydon Assets: Influential editor of the Evening Pulpit and running for Parliament. Prospects: He is the one man with the power to bring about Melmotte's downfall. Whether or not Rob Brydon, as the editor on the trail of Augustus Melmotte, gets his man will be revealed in The Way We Live Now. But Rob would never fancy the idea of actually being an editor. As a presenter for several years with BBC Wales, he could never understand why everyone got so excited about the news. His dream was to be a performer and a writer, and in his mind he was a taxi driver called Keith, a character he had first developed while at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. "Keith" turned into the fictional star of Rob's hit BBC2 series, Marion and Geoff, which went on to win The South Bank Show Best Drama Award. Since then he has co-created another BBC2 series with Julia Davis, Human Remains. He won Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards 2000 and was voted Best Newcomer to the Network at the Royal Television Society Awards. The Port Talbot-born performer has now found himself in a very new situation. "When you have success, people come to you and basically say: 'What do you want to do?'" Winning a role in The Way We Live Now was a dream come true. "Terrific director, wonderfully creative atmosphere. It was a delight. I have just been learning on a set like this. The stuff I'm known for is what I've written for myself or with Julia. This is very different. I've been very much just watching the old, and even young old, hands who've done far more of this traditional filmmaking than I have. "When you write and star in something like Human Remains, which Julia and I had a lot of control over, if a line doesn't work, you just change it. On something like this, when Andrew Davies has spent so long creating a wonderful script for us all, you don't want to change his lines because the odds are that he's got it right anyway. It's a different discipline." Rob, who will soon be seen with Steve Coogan in the feature film 24-Hour Party People (along with Shirley Henderson) adds: "The story of The Way We Live Now is timeless. At the end of the day, it comes down to human nature, human foibles, and human behavior. We can all identify with that, whether actors are wearing a Victorian frock coat or an Armani suit."