JOHN PARTRIDGE is best known for his role in the prime-time BBC soap EastEnders. Since January, he has played charmer Christian Clarke.

He originally trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School and then specialised in musical theatre at the Bush Davies and Doreen Bird performing arts schools.

At the age of 16 he joined the original cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. His other musicals include Tommy, Starlight Express, Grease and Miss Saigon. Last year he appeared alongside Elaine Paige in The Drowsy Chaperone.

Partridge, 37, lives with his boyfriend Jon in Greenwich.

How much money do you have in your wallet? I carry barely any cash round with me, I pay for most things by card.

Do you prefer debit or credit cards? Larger purchases go on the credit card and smaller purchases go on the debit card. I use NatWest for all of my accounts.

Are you more of a saver than a spender? I am a saver, but I’m quite a messy one. I do save, but it’s slightly random. I separate Vat, my mortgage and tax into three accounts.

How much did you earn last year? A six-figure sum. My salary has steadily increased from year to year. I have done musical theatre for nearly 20 years. Last year I was in a show called the Drowsy Chaperone at the Novello theatre with Elaine Page and that is where I was spotted for EastEnders.

I loved that show and all the people in it. It was fantastic to work with Elaine. She is a musical theatre icon and I would go as far as saying a national treasure. It was about everybody else’s performance as well as her own. For a lead role you can get anything from £1,450 to £4,000 a week. I was in it for four months.

I am paid per episode on EastEnders and you are guaranteed on contract a certain number of episodes, so you know roughly how much you can make and then there is a bonus. I am having the time of my life on EastEnders.

The fact that in one day there may be 30 scenes to shoot or produce, and to be able to turn that out with such a degree of quality is really no small feat. It is a skill in itself to be working in this genre.

I have done quite a few commercials. If you are on a repeat, commercials make a lot of money but on a buy-out, where you don’t get repeats, not so much. But generally you can look to be making £18,000 to £20,000 even if you are on a buy-out.

I made £53,000 for a Cadbury’s Twirl one. I will never eat a Twirl again; we ate thousands of them! That was in 1990. I didn’t do any commercials this year because I am now the sole commodity of the BBC. They are very strict, understandably so.

What was in your first pay packet? When I first went into Cats and joined the ensemble in 1988 I probably made £275 a week before tax and then I went on to play principal roles so obviously it went up.

Have you ever been hard up? I come from a working-class background, from a northern industrial town – paper mills, that type of thing. We never had much money but we didn’t want for anything. When I went to ballet school I managed to get a government-funded scholarship.

My sister danced and I used to go pick her up and watch the last half hour and I decided I wanted to do it. It was one huge adventure.

Somehow I knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, coming from the background that I come from. I do get the comparison to Billy Elliot quite a lot, but there were a few of us from a similar background because there is no snobbery or elitism in the selection.

What is the most lucrative work you have ever done? Did you use the fee for something special? As an actor, you can’t beat television. Right now I am in my most lucrative phase. In youth you spend it straightaway but as I become older and wiser I’ve become better with all of that and you want less.

What property do you own? I am sleeping on a friend’s floor at the moment as we wait to move into our new house. The house cost £400,000. We actually got £25,000 off and that is the good thing about the market right now. It had been on the market for more than a year and people are willing to take lower offers. It was going for £475,000 last year.

It’s a Corbett-style house in Greenwich, built in the beginning of 1900s. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, both en suite. It is in a family area and is near a quite sought-after primary school so it will be great for resale.

We pulled out of two properties before that, so we have spent over £10,000 on surveyors and we haven’t even moved.

Each time we have gone through the process of applying for a house it has taken six weeks and interest rates have gone up by a big margin in the meantime. The first offer we got was 5.24%; we had to pull out of that and the next offer was 5.79%; and now we have ended up paying 6.54%. I think mortgage companies are making it impossible for first-time buyers.

Do you invest in shares? No I don’t. I think you should invest in things that you know about and I have no idea about shares. I would rather invest in bricks and mortar.

Property or pension? Oh God, property. I used to have an equity pension then I left the country for so long I stopped paying into it. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to come back.

Are you financially better off than your parents? Do I manage my money better than them? No. But am I better off, yes. I am a generous son but much to their disgust I am the type of person who will spend £200 on a pair of sunglasses; they think it’s slightly ostentatious.

What has been your worst investment? An old Mercedes coupé I paid £7,000 for. It looked good but was a pile of junk. I think I drove it for two weeks and it was written off – it was absolutely a death trap. And your best? I would have to say my house and my boyfriend.

What aspect of our tax system would you change? Stamp duty for first-time buyers. It is outrageous to expect first-time buyers who are struggling to get on the ladder to be taxed on top, which adds virtually a third on to their costs again. Stamp duty has added about £13,000-£14,000 on top of our deposit.

What is your financial priority? My priority for the future would be paying off as much as I can from my mortgage. We are willing to pay extra lump sums as well as the normal repayments. I am hoping to pay it off in seven years.

Do you have a money weakness? I do spend a lot of money on groceries. I love cooking, I love to eat and we always have lovely things in the fridge. We have tended to stop eating out now and eat more at home. But with the credit crunch I have seen my weekly grocery bill increase by 35%. One specification with our house was that we needed a vegetable patch to grow our own.

What is the most important thing you have learnt about money? The difference between gross and net, really. You really can’t put off paying tax because I have been stung before that way. I was fined before when a bill for around £40,000 came in and it took me two years to pay if off.

Explore Stage

• Theatre

• Comedy

• Opera

• Dance

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010