A broken leg robbed Christopher Cazenove of his dream role of Henry Higgins in the West End. He talks to VIV HARDWICK about taking My Fair Lady on a year's tour and why it wasn't worth having singing lessons for the role.

CHRISTOPHER Cazenove admits that he thought he'd missed out on the role he was 'lusting after', that of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, as a result of breaking his leg five years ago. But despite losing the offer of the West End part, the actor has recovered from two operations and clinched a yearlong national tour last August.

As the show prepares to wow audiences at Sunderland's Empire for a month-long run, Cazenove recalls the night when his career, quite literally, took an agonising tumble just before the Drury Lane revival of the famous Lerner and Loewe show came up for grabs.

"It was one of those ridiculously stupid things. I was at a summer party given by my then agent, and not particularly pissed, when I slipped on a piece of sloping brickwork and fell into the basement area. It would have been fine but there was a ladder stacked against the wall and my leg went through the rungs and twisted and I snapped both bones just above the ankle, " he explains.

This bizarre incident left the actor on crutches when he was approached about taking over the West End role from Jonathan Pryce. "I was called in by the producers and when they saw I was so badly injured I thought I'd blown my chance because I obviously wasn't a contender at that time, " Cazenove says. While other actors like Alex Jennings took on the West End love and linguistics, the actor found himself again being asked to audition last year for the tour.

Like Rex Harrison, who is the Higgins that most remember, Cazenove is not noted for his singing voice, but he opted for Why Can't The English and I'm An Ordinary Man and won the role two weeks later. "I didn't take any singing lessons and I felt a bit like Rex who was famously sent off to a tutor and it was quickly decided 'no, you shouldn't have any more lessons' when they heard the results, " jokes the actor, who began his West End career in a play called The Lionel Touch alongside Harrison. His link with so many upper class roles over the years - from Charlie Tyrrell in BBC1's The Duchess Of Duke Street in the 1970s to stock English baddie aristocrat in movie Three Men And A Little Lady and Ben Carrington in Dynasty - makes him a perfect choice as the professor of language who bets he can turn a flower girl into a high society lady.

HALFWAY through the tour, Cazenove says: "It is a tough show vocally because he's quite a bombastic person and a lot of work for me, but so far, and we've been touring for six months, things have been going well. Higgins is a monster but I hope I make him a loveable monster. In fact some of the things he says are so monstrous and outrageous that it becomes comedy. I see this as the job of a lifetime and I didn't have to make any tough decisions about accepting. All I do know is that I'm going on holiday after touring for a year, " Cazenove laughs.

He praises Amy Nuttall, the former Emmerdale actress, and Lisa O'Hare, who are his joint costars as Eliza Dolittle, and says that varying the role like this "keeps me on my toes because they play the part slightly differently".

"It was a brilliant idea to have two Elizas who both have wonderful voices. As long as the actress knows what they're doing it's fine, " he adds, picking out the song Wouldn't It Be Loverly as one of the high points of the show.

One job that a broken leg didn't halt was that of policeman Row Colemore alongside fellow middleaged heart-throb actor Martin Shaw in BBC1's Judge John Deed.

Cazenove popped up regularly as the Judge's police pal and had his broken leg and walking with a stick included in the script.

"I was probably doing too much, and more than I should have done, and that was why I had to go back and have another operation.

Because it happened while we were in the middle of a series I had to be filmed sitting down and leaning against doorposts to hide the extent of my injury, " he jokes.

However, the scripts for Judge John Deed saw Colemore turn into a baddie which Cazenove admits he found quite odd.

"Then they were going to put him in the dock, which I thought was a pretty bad idea, because they decided that it was too far fetched because Martin couldn't have been trying the case. Frankly, I'd done three seasons and I thought it was enough because my character hadn't developed that far and it was a good moment to leave, " he says.

As for the long-term effects of his bad leg he says: "There hasn't been anything major, but I'm not very good at running for buses now. But then I'm not required to do much running these days."

My Fair Lady runs at Sunderland's Empire Theatre for most of May, 2-27. Box Office: 0870 602 1130