Tam was born in Leith and has been a professional actor and theatre maker for over 40 years. As an actor he's played Roddy the barman in the iconic Scottish
movie Local Hero, Macdougall in Outlaw/King and gangster Thomas McCabe in BBC's River City. His recent TV work includes Trust Me 2 (BBC), The Victim (BBC), Shadow and Bone (Netflix), Fortitude (Sky Atlantic) Crime (ITVX) and Annika (BBC).

Tam has had a long term working relationship with Irvine Welsh, narrating 13 of his audiobooks and touring internationally his one man show of Filth.




As a theatre maker Tam has adapted several novels for stage, including Louise Welsh's award-winning debut novel The Cutting Room for the Citizens' Theatre. His adaptation of Venus As A Boy by Luke Sutherland, from which his lockdown Scene For Survival came, was produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and his company Burnt Goods. The one man show with a live score performed by Luke Sutherland followed the journey of the book from the Orkneys to Soho, premiering in Hoy and Stromness.



Alongside this, Tam has always been involved with music in many collaborations, notably with the SNJO narrating Liz Lochhead's Scots version of Peter and the Wolf in an orchestration by Tommy Smith. He is a longtime performer with the Resonance Radio Orchestra.

Tam's Burnsian band The Bum-Clocks feature on the Out of the Ordinary album Stranger Things Have

Happened released in 2019 and he has recently joined the post-punk Edinburgh band The Scars as lead singer.