South Shields actor Dale Meeks was asked to keep his regional accent when he auditioned for Emmerdale.

Now the man who nearly gave up acting just before his big TV chance tells Steve Pratt about joining his favourite soap.

FAME for Dale Meeks is having a woman with a trolley penning him in while shopping in Asda and giving him advice about his love life. That's the sort of thing that happens to the South Shields-born actor now he's joined the cast of ITV1's soap Emmerdale as fishmonger Simon Meredith.

Understandably, viewers are worried about him as he's taken up with Nicola, a young woman who's been working her way through the male characters.

"I didn't think that being in the series would affect me at all," says Meeks, 28. "I certainly didn't expect that everywhere I go five or six people ask you for your autograph, and people tell you off for going out with a slut like Nicola.

"Everyone has been really lovely and positive. Sadly no young, nubile girls have approached me. Simon seems to have mum and grandma appeal."

Playing a fishmonger - although a wealthy one who's a restaurateur, and runs his own import/export business - lays him open to a certain type of comment. "I get grief everywhere I go. People ask if I've got any fish. I tell them not to ask if I've got crabs," he says.

"Simon is great. It's like an extension of me. I am Simon without the money. He's an upbeat guy, and it's nice to play someone who's confident as well in front of women. He knows how to flirt with them."

Simon more or less saved his career. He'd been out of work for 18 months after a long run in London's West End in the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton musical The Beautiful Game.

Meeks, who began acting as a teenager in the BBC's junior Geordie soap Byker Grove, was on the point of packing in acting. "I was getting plenty of auditions but not getting any parts. I was spending a lot of money going down from Newcastle to London for auditions," he recalls.

"I got myself quite upset. I was in London and feeling really lonely, and rang home and said, 'I'm giving up'. I was going to apply for a technician's job at the Customs House in South Shields, to help me write off my debts and get on my feet again.

"I'd been in London for an audition and got another call from my agent, who said I had another audition in London in a couple of days time. I only had the clothes I was standing up in, and no money to go back home to get fresh ones.

"Fortunately, he said that Emmerdale would pay my expenses. But I said if I didn't get that job, then I would give up.

When he arrived for the audition, he found he was up against 20 other hopefuls. He read the script and figured they'd want him to do a Yorkshire dialect. But the producers told him to read it in his natural Geordie accent - and that's how he plays Simon.

He knew that the fishmonger would be getting together with Nicola, but nothing more as to how his character would develop. "It's exciting being involved in this on-going process. Every fortnight a new set of scripts arrives on your doorstep. But other people seem to hear your storylines before you do," he says.

His initial contract is for a year, and he admits he'd be happy to stay for as long as the programme-makers want him. He's currently commuting between Newcastle and Leeds, where Emmerdale is made. Scheduling means he gets time off to return home. If his character is required in a lot of scenes, he stays over in Leeds.

He spent five years in Byker Grove from the age of 14, although he never knew from one series to the next whether his character would be returning.

"I had so many false exits from the show. I was the baddy and they were not sure whether they were going to bring that story back. So I had four leaving dos. The last time I didn't have a leaving party - and I didn't go back," he says.

That was a good time to be acting in the North-East as Spender and the Catherine Cookson TV movies were filming there too. He also found time to appear in amateur theatre, as a member of South Shields Amateur Operatic Society. Being young and male, he was in great demand for roles in which he wouldn't have been cast in other circumstances.

He appeared in their shows at Sunderland's Empire. The experience proved valuable when it came to appearing in a grand London West End theatre in Beautiful Game. "People said to me, 'you're not fazed by working in such a big theatre', and said, 'no, because I've worked in them before'," he says. "Working with the amateur society wasn't drama school, but taught me a lot of things."

He claims that Emmerdale has always been his favourite TV soap. He used to watch it avidly as a student, and fellow cast members would crowd into his dressing room before curtain up on Beautiful Game to watch the soap.

His arrival in the series has boosted the Geordie element. North-East actress Charlie Hardwick debuted around the same time, joining John Middleton, who plays the Rev Ashley and lives in Whitley Bay, and Elisabeth Estensen, who plays Woolpack landlady Diane. "I did worry there was going to be a Geordie overload," jokes Meeks.

* Emmerdale: ITV1, Sunday to Friday, 7pm.

Published: 25/03/2004