The wellies were all-important in re-creating Compo on stage, actor Harry Dickman tells Viv Hardwick.

THE actor who turned down the Royal Shakespeare Company in favour of stand-up comedy with Butlins is currently wearing the most famous pair of wellies in the country… those belonging to Compo Semini.

Harry Dickman won the stage role as a result of playing that other old sitcom master of mirth, Albert Steptoe, in a theatre version of Steptoe And Son which ran in the West End.

Now he’s the most important part of a new touring version of Roy Clarke’s three men ageing disgracefully, who have been a staple part of Sunday TV for 36 years. The play’s based on Clarke’s 1987 Summer Wine novel, The Moonbather, and the tour reaches Darlington’s Civic Theatre on November 9-14.

The ghost on Dickman’s shoulder is that of Bill Owen, who died in 1999, aged 85, having played Compo on BBC1 since 1973 on what has become the world’s longest-running comedy series.

“I’m not sure why I’m being cast as dirty old men, but it’s true. I grew this dreadful stubble as Steptoe in the West End and I’ve done the damn same thing again here. If I didn’t the character wouldn’t be there,” he says.

“I’m not basing the character totally on the character created by the lovely, late Bill Owen because I’m not him. He was fantastic, arguably iconic, but I’ve made my Compo a little more of a nudge towards the Brian Rix farce. I love farce, anything that’s physical and I can get thrown around.

“Before I got the role I went out and bought the DVDs as actors do and I studied him as best I could to get the little idiosyncrasies like his walk and attempted the Yorkshire dialect. Luckily the director Chris Jordan wasn’t too worried that my Scouse accent was coming through,” he says.

Dickman was aware that Compo’s costume “for want of a better word” had to be believable if he was bringing such an endearing character back to life. “I rehearsed my part in the famous wellingtons because if you haven’t got them on you can’t do his distinctive walk.

They’re quite black horrible wellies and they work because I quite often base my characters on a walk. It sounds crazy but it’s true,” says the actor who once understudied Anthony Newley in Scrooge and rehearsed in slippers to ensure he got the old misery’s shuffle.

“I don’t really give a damn if it’s method acting or not, as long as it works. Other times it’s a cadence or inflection of the voice that gets the character you want. So now my trousers as Compo are held up by a piece of string with a dreadful pullover that’s so full of holes that it’s difficult to put on. But it was the wellies and woollen hat that were so important in rehearsals. The wardrobe department had difficulty in finding the wellingtons. We started in Eastbourne and they could only get coloured ones which just wouldn’t do because it made me look a bit camp,” he laughs.

“I look a right prat, but it’s funny because I’m only 5ft 6 inches and quite slim. Luckily, because I’ve danced a lot in musicals during my career I’m quite fit for all the diving about,” adds Dickman.

His only disappointment with the stage version, where Timothy Kightley plays Clegg and John Pennington is Foggy, is that his scenes with broom-wielding, wrinkled-stocking Nora Batty (Estelle Collins) are as rare as Compo’s bath-night.

“There aren’t any (scenes) and between you and I there should have been. I think Roy Clarke should have brought it in. The Nora Batty part is tiny and I think it’s wrong, but I didn’t write this,” he says revealing that when Ruth Madoc was cast he assumed she was taking that role.

“She’s got a new part of a Welsh character called Meg which was a surprise,” Dickman admits.

Former Crossroads star Tony Adams and Steven Pinder of Brookside fame also pop up in cameo roles in front of a set which takes the audience right back to the Yorkshire Dales around Holmfirth.

“John and Tim were both trained in theatre whereas I’ve never trained in anything. I never wanted to be an actor you see. In 1961-62 the Royal Shakespeare Company had just been formed and I got the part with them in a West End play. Then I was summoned to the RSC offices and offered another part in the next West End play and I said ‘I’m sorry I don’t want it. I ‘m going to be a stand-up at Butlins’. I can dine out on that story because it was perfectly true. Sometimes you follow your dreams and I took over from an unknown guy called Jimmy Tarbuck. But 15 years later I was in the National Theatre with Michael Gambon. Fate is funny.”

■ Last Of The Summer Wine, Darlington Civic Theatre, November 9-14. Tickets: £17-£24.50.

Box Office: 01325-486555 darlingtonarts.co.uk