[1] Nicholas's first job between leaving school and going to drama college was as a trainee manager in Beatties department store in Wolverhampton (1965–66) from which he was sacked for rehearsing on the shop floor his lines for an amateur production.
[1] During his time at drama college he appeared in pantomime with Jimmy Jewel and Donald Peers, and survived a summer season as a Redcoat at Butlins Skegness.
[1] He performed his own solo adaptation of Three Men in a Boat at the Edinburgh Festival (1980) and May Fair Theatre (1981–82),[3] which won him a nomination for an Olivier Award as Most Promising Newcomer.
[5] Other theatre roles include Narrator in Side by Side by Sondheim (Haymarket Theatre, Leicester); Jack Chesney in Charley's Aunt (York); Richard II in Circle of Glory (national tour); Lord Brocklehurst in The Admirable Crichton (Greenwich Theatre), Greg in Relatively Speaking opposite Dora Bryan and Moray Watson; Lenny in The Homecoming (directed by Timothy West); national tours of Beyond the Fringe as Dudley Moore (for Cameron Mackintosh); Canaries Sometimes Sing (with Diana Weston); An Ideal Husband (with Jeremy Sinden and Stephanie Turner) and Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal (Derby and Nottingham).
[1] Nicholas has also performed on television in roles such as Inigo Jollifant in The Good Companions,[6] Nathaniel Winkle in The Pickwick Papers,[6] John Maddingham in Crossroads,[6] Sir Jonathan Sibley in Fay Weldon's Bright Smiler (1985) (with Janet Suzman and Jane Asher),[7] Prospects (opposite David Suchet), The Upper Hand, Lewis Lake in Wish Me Luck,[6] as well as voicing Lionel in all 39 episodes of Budgie the Little Helicopter.
Other television appearances include roles in The Duchess of Duke Street, Z-Cars, When the Boat Comes In, the episodes 'Whispers' (1981) as Colin Thomas; 'Past Lives' (1982) as Peter Marshall; 'Work Force' (1984) as Vernon in Juliet Bravo, Rumpole of the Bailey, Heartbeat (1999),[8] Birds of a Feather, The Bill and London's Burning.
[16][17] One of the UK's most authoritative writers on the piano and pianists, he has written four highly-acclaimed reference books on classical music, as well as biographies of Leopold Godowsky and Frédéric Chopin.
[13][18] He has read and / or adapted more than twenty books for radio and spoken word recordings including Axel Munthe's The Story of San Michele and The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W. N. P.
[24] His lifelong enthusiasm for comic verse led to his first book, Raspberries and Other Trifles (Hutchinson, 1984), a parody of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children.