They work just a few miles from our doorsteps, but the lives of rich, city bankers seem a world away from our own reality.

What goes on in those enormous, shiny sky scrapers in Canary Wharf is for many a complete mystery – but can have a direct impact on our lives.

Roaring Trade, a play by Stephen Thompson currently showing at the Park Theatre, in Finsbury Park, last week, lands the audience on a trading platform in the City, London’s financial heart.

Starring Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels actor Nick Moran as seasoned bond trader Donny, the play sees four financiers challenge each other to their limits, their actions exploring the greedy culture of the city’s banking sector.

Explaining further, Nick, who grew up in Dalston and South Oxhey, says: “It’s not just about some greedy traders, it touches on prejudices and class and people’s humanity – how important is your job in the broad scheme of things? It’s a very clever piece.”

Nick’s character Donny faces a challenge when Spoon, a younger, fresher new arrival fights to stake a claim in the bank.

Meanwhile, seasoned trader PJ lags behind, struggling to paper over cracks in his personal life while astute businesswoman Jess wraps clients around her little finger.

“What the play does in a very clever way is explain about trading and how it works,” continues the 45-year-old, who is making his début at The Park Theatre.

“It’s also about the human aspect of four people in a room and what the politics are," he adds.

“People have a bit more of an understanding of recent events – what bankers have been up to and what the city has been up to with our money and with other people’s.”

However Nick, who recently married Harley Street dentist Dr Jasmin Duran, admits he’s no stranger to splashing the cash.

“I’m disastrously bad with money – hilariously bad,” he laughs, mentioning tales of spending £500 on a bottle of vodka in a Soho bar, and getting his rarely-used pilot’s licence.

“Because I had nothing for such a long time, then I had loads, I just spent it all!” remembers the actor.

“Then I went back to nothing again, so I hover between being poor or having an enormous tax bill – one of those two states.

“I’m a married man now, so one of my resolutions is to be a little bit more sensible and let Jasmin, my wife, hold the purse strings a bit more. She’s a lot more sensible than I am.”

Aged 10, Nick moved to a “tin house council estate” in South Oxhey after his dad, who worked for the AA, moved offices to Stanmore.

But the actor says he was frequently in trouble at school.

“They stuck me in school plays and it sort of calmed me down a bit,” remembers the former Sir James Altham School pupil.

“I had no aspirations of going to drama school, I got kicked out of sixth form college and one of the teachers said to me: ‘I think you’re an undiagnosed dyslexic and I think this is affecting everything. Have you thought of auditioning for drama school?’

“I didn’t know that existed; I mean on that estate nobody I knew had ever been. I didn’t know you could go somewhere and do acting.”

Once he hit 16, Nick resolved to pursue a career in acting and auditioned for drama school, taking up a place at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in Wood Green when he was 17.

After graduating, the budding actor spent around 10 years playing roles in various theatre productions and television shows, before landing his big break as Eddy the card sharp in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998.

“I was an overnight success,” says Nick, wryly adding: “Everyone forgot about all the dreadful telly and the plays and the West End stints – the slogging at it that you do, because you’ve done that one film and you’ve appeared – as they would look at it – from nowhere. I did put the hours in.”

Once voted GQ’s Most Stylish Man of the Year, Nick’s career went from strength to strength after Lock Stock and he has since acted in Harry Potter, The Wrong Mans and Mr Selfridge.

Although he now lives in swanky Fitzrovia, the former Watford Observer paper boy returned to Oxhey when he directed The Kid in 2010.

“I used South Oxhey as the location,” he explains. “The kids that were hanging around – I said to the mums and dads, if you can give them something that looks 80s they can be in the film. And everyone did – on that green off Prestwick Road, they all chipped in and I was really proud of them.”

Roaring Trade, Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, until October 24, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, Thursday and Saturday matinees, 3pm. Details: 020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk.