The cat (or is it dog?) is out of the bag about Scooby-Doo being played by a Tynesider. Jamie Brown talks to Viv Hardwick about his unusual starring role.

FORTY years after the animated, everhungry dog, Scooby-Doo, was unleashed on the world’s children, the voice inside the skin has a decidedly Geordie twang as Gateshead’s Jamie Brown becomes just the fifth person to play the cowardly crimefighter.

“Basically, I think I got the role because I share Scooby’s two passions, food and sleep,”

jokes the 24-year-old, who admits he was obsessed with watching the Hanna-Barbera Productions hero as a boy.

“Its a bizarre turn of events and certainly the biggest thing I’ve done so far. We’re doing most of the number one venues in the country,” says the Bretton Hall College, Leeds, trained actor who won the role shortly after playing Hamlet with the Derby-based 1623 Theatre Company.

Most exciting for Brown are visits to Billingham Forum this week and the Sunderland Empire, May 22-24, which are theatres he’s attended scores of times “but never actually performed in. It’s going to be a real honour to set foot on those stages and play to an audience.” The young performer from Leam Lane, Felling, who now lives in London, is looking forward to mum, Carol, dad, Jimmy, and brother, Karl, coming to see the show at Sunderland.

“If I had my own way I’d still be based in the North-East, where I think I belong, but most of the job opportunities are in London. No pun intended, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world down there.

“In between acting jobs I have done other things. I sprayed a lot of perfume on a lot of people, which they didn’t appear to like, when I worked in a department store.

Essentially, I was one of the people who squirted perfume on customers as they came off the escalator. But I do have an empathy with those who do it now because staff don’t have any choice but to do it,” he says.

Fortunately, he landed the role of Scooby just after New Year and will be touring as the well-known dog until November.

The show has a new script to the comedy-drama which toured last year and now has Scooby involved in a ghostly pirate adventure full of slapstick and chase scenes. He recalls landing the role after a call from his agent. “I was told there was a tour of Scooby-Doo and the Pirate Ghost and I said ‘well I’m not skinny like Shaggy and not broad enough to be a Fred’ and I was counting down who it could be.

Then my agent said ‘the audition is for Scooby’ and that was the last thing I expected. I went along and did lots of physical theatre and tried out scenes with other prospective gang members and was lucky enough to get the job.”

Would he really have picked the unseen role of Scooby as his big return to his home town region? “I think it is a good fun show and more of an homage to the original Scooby- Doo episodes. It’s a show that a lot of people have been brought up with.

“Scooby-Doo is 40 this year and he is probably the most prestigious name from family entertainment shows of that era. It’s also such a strange thing to take a lot of children’s idols and put them on a stage.

“There’s a lot of pressure involved because you’re not inventing new characters, you’re living up to the expectations that audiences have in their heads,” Brown says.

He calls it a unique experience – as well as fairly wearing on the knees and back – to fit his 6ft frame into a dog costume and entertain using mime without facial expressions and Scooby’s limited rooby-roo vocabulary.

“This is a lot more about the character you’re expressing through the costume and I studied a lot of the cartoons to get Scooby’s movements right, because fans know the mannerisms and movements inside out,” he explains.

“Some of the kids go into absolute awe when the character they see, which is normally three or four inches tall on TV, is this six-foot dog. I thought they would realise it was just a guy in a costume but you’d be amazed at the number between five and nine years old who take it at face value,”

Brown says.

His ambition is to do more acting as well as writing but he is currently in discussions about what to do after playing Scooby Doo.

For now he’s enjoying a dog’s life and the sight of one girl screaming so much to warn him that a ghost was behind him that she had to be led outside to calm down.

“It’s definitely eventful,” he laughs.

■ Scooby-Doo And The Pirate Ghost runs at Billingham Forum until Sunday. Box Office: 01642-552663. Then the tour moves to Sunderland Empire, May 22-24, 0844-847-2499.