Reji Raj Singh is proud of what he calls his two cultures. “My Indianness and my Englishness - they’re both beneficial and enriching,” he says. “It’s such an advantage to have a foot in each.”

It is an advantage that last year secured him a temporary transfer from his present-day inner-city teaching post to a job as a tutor in a make-believe country house of a century ago, featured in Channel 4‘s current series The Edwardian Country House.

It all began when Reji’s colleagues at St James and Michael’s C of E primary school in the London borough of Westminster saw a news item in The TES in April last year about the search for a “male Asian teacher willing to forsake the comforts of modern living”. His role was to act as tutor to the son of the “above-stairs” family, giving him Edwardian-style lessons for the camera and continuing his modern-day education behind the scenes. “Something about the article said it must be Reji,” recalls head Caroline Foster, “and we were right.”

Born in Fiji of Indian parents, Reji says that “living like an Edwardian was no big deal for me” (pronouncing “Edwardian” the old-fashioned way, to rhyme with “guardian”). “In Fiji we were a touch behind English culture; while we were having cream teas, Britain had already dispensed with that kind of thing. We were living in the tail end of the empire.”

Why did the Channel 4 series want an Indian tutor? “We were looking for a minority interest in our cast of 19,” says series producer Caroline Ross Pirie. “Most Asians in Britain a century ago were professionals. There were 700 Asians in British universities in 1911, and our research found at least one precedent - the son of a maharajah who was a tutor in a grand country house.”

A hundred years ago, the British Empire was at its height. “It was an important part of the British psyche, and having an Indian tutor allowed us to address that,” says Caroline Ross Pirie. So programme five in the series, to be shown next Tuesday, focuses on a “Raj supper” and “Empire ball” that Reji helped organise. In real life, Reji is studying Indian classical dance, and the ball features a group of his fellow dancers.

Reji has mixed feelings about the nine weeks he spent out of touch (except by letter) with his school. “I didn’t really miss the 21st century - I was never bored,” he says. “The pace was wonderfully slow.” He took long walks, read a lot and wrote letters every day. “And I enjoyed having proper conversations.”

On the other hand, he says it was “a gilded cage” in which he felt trapped. “I realised how much freedom I have in my ordinary life - nobody watching me putting on tails for dinner every night.” In his country house role he “had to dress formally all the time, and when you dress formally you speak formally. My persona changed.”

Much of the emphasis in early episodes of The Edwardian Country House has been on the difficulties of below-stairs life, with tensions between staff culminating in drunkenness and open revolt. Confined to the upstairs life, was Reji aware of what was going on? “I was oblivious to it all,” he says, “although I did hear gossip.” He admits that he and the butler Hugh Edgar did not get on, but the three people he “really gelled” with were the housekeeper, the ladies’ maid, and Avril, sister-in-law of head of household John Olliff-Cooper.

As for the then nine-year-old Guy Olliff-Cooper, Reji is disappointed that little of the “Edwardian” lessons he was giving him - “preparing him to be perhaps a governor in India” - has appeared on screen.

Clearly, Reji feels happier back in his Paddington school - a feeling the school reciprocated when filming ended last November. “We had a big ‘Welcome home Reji’ banner. We missed him,” says Caroline Foster. She and her colleagues are proud that Reji was selected for the series and see his experiences as a valuable resource for the school.

St James and Michael’s has a shifting population for whom English is not the first language: 30 languages are spoken in the playground. “We try to make the children feel at home. They love coming here because this is where they are free,” says Reji. As an ESL and religious education specialist, he sees the school’s predominantly Muslim intake as a positive thing. “With religion, we try to bring out the similarities.” An Anglican with Hindu grandparents, Reji is reading for an MA in theology; a corner of his office is filled with boxes labelled “Hinduism”, “Sikhism” and “Islam”, while a shelf bears the legend “Albanian Club”.

History, too, looks as if it will be putting demands on his time. “We want to use Reji’s experience when we do the Victorians in history,” says Caroline Foster. Which makes it a pity, in Reji’s view, that a lot of what he said to camera about Edwardian education has ended up on the cutting room floor: “My life is serious and teaching is a serious business. But it doesn’t make good telly, I suppose.”

Channel 4 will show the final two episodes of The Edwardian Country House on May 21 and 28. There is a supporting website at www.channel4. comcountryhouse, and a book of the same name by Juliet Gardiner (Macmillan, pound;20)