Rebecca Tyrrel: The historical record of Richard E Grant's dolls' house hobby is sparse

Who knew that Richard E Grant enjoys making dolls' houses? Every avid reader of Debrett's People of Today 2012 knows this to be truthful. The actor we like to chummily refer to as simply 'E' states this in his entry.

Yet the fact remains so obscure to the wider public that it has managed to evade even Christiane Berridge, editor of The Dolls' House Magazine. Perhaps Christiane, who has expressed her longing to find a celebrity dolls' house fan, was thrown off the scent by her description of the typical subscriber as "Female, over 45, family-focused, general interest in crafts, a home-lover, her dolls' house will be a form of escape from her 'real' life". Take out the "over 45" and 'REG', as he is sometimes known, falls narrowly outside the target demographic.

The historical record of the Swaziland-born actor, author and director's hobby is depressingly sparse. All that can be gleaned from E's official fan website, The REG Temple, is that "Alice from the United States" once "bought a book of doll house miniatures and came across a picture of REG in it. A bit different, huh?".

A bit too different, apparently, for the taste of E's estranged and embittered brother Stuart Esterhuysen (the family name). An accountant in South Africa, Stuart once told a tabloid that his sibling was a "pansy" who played with dolls, so the hobby seems to date back to childhood. And what a childhood it must have been, deftly sticking the headboard to Sleeping Beauty's tiny bed while surrounded by seven-foot-tall, rugby-obsessed Afrikaners whose idea of a light breakfast is half a barbecued zebra.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with childhood, though, and is instead the result of E taking the late Richard Harris – whose investment advice was "buy property, however small..." – too literally.

One day, a Hoxton gallery will surely stage an exhibition of the Withnail & I star's 'small' works, with the central exhibit possibly being E's recreation of Uncle Monty's Cumbrian cottage in miniature, replete with dinky empty bottles that once contained the best wines available to humanity. Who knows, it could even become a lucrative business, so that one day E will be able to echo Nora from Ibsen's A Doll's House by declaring: "Still, it was really tremendous fun sitting there working and earning money. It was almost like being a man".