‘Spider-Man’s dad’ Dominic Holland is game for a laugh at the Edinburgh Fringe

DOMINIC HOLLAND and his son are both playing Edinburgh just now.

But stand-up dad Dominic is playing the Free Fringe, while young Tom is packing the city’s cinemas as the star of the new Marvel superhero blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming.

“Yup, I’m Spider-Man’s dad!” laughs Dominic, who won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer at the Fringe in 1993 and was a TV panel show regular.

“His schedule’s bonkers. He’s flying today from LA to Singapore for a thing, then he’s meeting another of my sons in Paris next week — he’s all over the world and he’s having a great time doing really well.

“And his mum and two brothers recently flew first class to LA, while I stayed in London while our youngest boy did his A-levels.

“But I just think: ‘Wow, Tom, good for you, man!’

“I look at my son and he’s extraordinarily confident and I just think: ‘Gosh, where did that come from?’

“I love the fact that my little boy went to a comprehensive school because a lot of actors seem to have gone to Harrow or Eton.

“It’s refreshing that here comes a kid who’s an A-list actor now and while I wouldn’t say he’s had an ordinary background — because I’ve made a few bob and been in the industry — he wasn’t born with that silver spoon.

“He’s a regular kid, an ordinary boy. He’s not been to a drama school, he didn’t have drama lessons, we’re not pushy parents — this happened inadvertently and he’s taken his opportunities.

“People ask: ‘Did you help him get on?’ and I think: ‘What are you talking about?

“‘I haven’t been on telly for 15 years, there’s no way I can make my son a movie star!’”

Dominic has had a brush with Hollywood himself having written several “screenplays at various stages of not being filmed”.

“My first novel was about trying to meet a Hollywood suit, and Tom now has meetings with people that people like me dream of meeting,” he says.

“I was on set with Tom and the head of Sony Pictures gave me a big cuddle because I was Tom’s dad.

“I thought: ‘If you’d told me 15 years ago I would be on the set of a major movie getting a hug from someone like that I’d have thought: ‘Blimey, I’ve made it, my films are getting made,’ not that my little boy was getting movies made and I’m just his old man!

“I don’t have any regrets. The way I look at it, all the fortune I don’t think I got has shone on my son, so that makes me pretty happy.

“So I’ve written a new book, Eclipsed, the spine of which is me not getting my film projects off the ground and the comparison with what’s happened with Tom.

“In fact, I’m in talks to turn it into a sitcom.”

So, Dom might not be absent from our TV screens for much longer.

Dominic Holland is at the Fringe until August 27. For information visit www.edfringe.com