Tam has been a professional actor and theatre maker for 40 years this year. As an actor he's played Roddy the barman in the iconic Scottish movie Local Hero and gangster Thomas McCabe in BBC's River City. His other recent TV work includes Trust Me season 2 (BBC), The Victim (BBC), Shadow and Bone (Netflix), Fortitude season 3 (Sky Atlantic) and Annika (UKTV). Tam has had a long term working relationship with Irvine Welsh, narrating 10 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 Scene For Survival comes, 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, most recently with the SNJO narrating Liz Lochhead's Scots version of Peter and the Wolf in an orchestration by Tommy Smith. Tam's Burnsian band The Bum-Clocks feature on the Out of the Ordinary album Stranger Things Have Happened released in 2019.