Gangster rap

He talks to VIV HARDWICK about his major musical debut alongside the exBBC announcer while cast members Barry Howard and Middlesbrough's Dawn Spence tell all about touring.

THE mere mention that Michael Starke has a James Cagney swagger in his performance as Moonface Martin in Anything Goes brings a gangster-sized smile to his face.

Liverpudlian, pocket battleship shaped Starke is a TV familiar to millions thanks to Sinbad in C4's Brookside and North Yorkshire wheeler-dealer Ken Hopkirk in ITV's The Royal. But he admits being terrified after agreeing to take on the machine gun-totting public enemy, who goes into hiding on an ocean liner, because he'd never appeared in an old-style musical before.

"That's lovely you noticed me being Cagneyesque because I wanted to create a character like something out of his film Angels With Dirty Faces, " he says, although friends have made him giggle by comparing him to cartoon cat Benny The Ball.

He's enjoying his duets with Ria Jones (who plays Reno) and Middlesbrough-born Dawn Spence (who is gangster's moll Erma) and a growling New York-accented solo but the 'all-dancing' side of the show is a little different.

"I am to dancing what King Kong is to urban regeneration, " jokes Starke who has been delighted that choreographer Bill Deamer has found steps to suit all abilities in the show.

"I do have this fear of the whole audience of 1,800 people standing up one night, pointing at me and shouting 'you're rubbish' but the reception has been quite the opposite, " he says and reveals that the show's producers had been looking to use him in a musical for the past three years.

What's got in the way is Starke's involvement in The Royal, which is due to start a new series shortly.

"I'm free at the moment and they (Yorkshire Television) usually see how well The Royal does with the viewers before commissioning another series, " he explains.

Born Michael Clarke - the name change was forced on him by another Michael Clarke being registered with Equity - he is married to actress Lynne Francis and the couple have two daughters, Jamie, 19, and Hayley, 16, who are both budding performers.

"It would be great for all of us to appear in a project together, but at the moment I can't even put in a word for them with my friends in the industry at auditions without being told off, " he jokes.

Starke feels he's been lucky finding the right characters throughout his career and currently has the musicals bug.

"But I'm not used to being so disciplined, I've got into the laziness of TV where you learn your lines the night before. You can't do that in the theatre and when you get it right on stage you think 'you've still got it kid'."

Starke is delighted that highlytravelled co-star Dawn Spence is keeping an eye on the tour accommodation arrangements which brings Anything Goes to Darlington, York, Newcastle and Sunderland.

Spence, who comes from Ayresome Street, Middlesbrough, where her parents still live, trained at Londlon's Doreen Bird College as a 16-year-old and settled in Los Angeles ten years ago. Now she travels between the US and the UK depending on the best job offer.

"It doesn't strike me as odd about commuting between Los Angeles and the West End because it's something I've always done, " says Spence, although Hollywood directors like her English background while she's in demand in the UK for her US accent.

Her parents, brothers and sisters are looking forward to seeing the show tour so close to Teesside on at least three occasions, while Spence likes the thought of not having to live quite so much out of suitcase for a month.

Another familiar face fielded at the press launch of Anything Goes is comedy actor Barry Howard, who is still fondly remembered as the supercilious champion ballroom dancer Barry Stuart-Hargreaves from BBC's long-running sitcom HiDe-Hi. The Brighton-based actor likes the idea of still being able to twirl the light fantastic, but has reached an age where watching the show's lengthy dance routines alongside the likes of Michael Starke is a more sensible move.

He still loves touring and couldn't wait to start work as hard-nosed multi-millionaire Elisha Whitney who courts Angela Rippon's character of Evangeline Harcourt.

"I was once told by Sir Billy Bultin's widow that he'd have loved to have developed a Hi-De-Hi theme park along the same lines as the BBC show, so people were wrong to think that he didn't like holiday camps being sent up by the sitcom.

"We'd get far more repeat fees if a guy at the BBC didn't hate the show so much and stops them being rerun, " Howard says.

Anything Goes runs at Darlington's Civic Theatre, March 20-26, (01325) 486555; Grand Opera House, York, July 10-15, 0870 606 3595 and Newcastle Theatre Royal, June 19-24, 0870 905 5060.

The Royal returns on ITV1, Sunday, 8pm