He may end up soaked and starkers, but Matthew Cottle is delighted to be sailing the high seas in his lastest play, he tells Viv Hardwick.

FACED with the prospect of stripping stark naked, sailing a cruiser on 12 tonnes of water inside Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre and falling overboard during a fight scene, Matthew Cottle agrees he needs every ounce of his comedy acting ability.

And it's hardly surprising to learn that Alan Ayckbourn's boating holiday play has been hardly seen since it made a dramatic splash in 1982.

Cottle, who shot to fame in three series of the BBC's Game On, says: "It's a brilliant play but the technical problems that come with it mean it's rarely performed. We're doing it on the water and the boat's actually moving.

"There is a moment in the play, towards the end, where we have a fight and jump into the water and the first time we did, it took my breath away. If I'd have had to deliver a line straight away, I couldn't have done it. Worse still, five minutes later, I have to take all my clothes off."

Cottle and co-star Saskia Butler, who plays his wife, close the show starkers as a couple finally taking on a challenge to swim out to an island for what might be described as a 'marital moment'.

He jokes: "I've never taken my clothes off on stage before. These people who usually do are the ones who go to the gym regularly, but I'm not one of those types. I'm a normal bloke, but it's only for five seconds, so I'm hoping that the scene's not too well lit. You can't do the play without it and it should be quite an amazing thing."

Cottle's aware the cast are one loss of balance away from an unexpected piece of underwater acting, but says: "The audience will quite like it if something goes wrong. I bumped into Alan about a year ago and I knew if they were going to do it, it was going to be full on. "It's just a little cruiser that would probably hold six people and quite a small acting area. There's very little space to move andwe've become very familiar with each other's parts, so to speak."

So did he always know he had a face for comedy? "Well, ginger hair, big nose, what else could I do? I'm a sort of loveable loser, but I said it, so you're okay in asking.

"I suppose it was amateur dramatics where it started and it's what I enjoy doing. I've done straight stuff as well, but I do more comic stuff. I love doing Alan's plays because if you are laughing, you're laughing at the truth of the characters.

"I would work for Alan full-time - he's my favourite playwright and the best director I've ever worked with. I've worked for him before in the West End, but never before in Scarborough, which is a brilliantly-run theatre.

There's no escape for Cottle from Game On, which made Samantha Janus a male fantasy figure and a tabloid newspaper target.

Asked about the pressures of acting alongside her, Cottle laughs and replies: "That was tough. I get things shouted at me in the street, they shout 'Fancy you working with Samantha Janus'. But they're just jealous and she's a lovely girl. We became quite close - no, not in that way - she came to my wedding and she's happily married with a baby now."

Now Cottle's sharing a house in Scarborough with co-star Stephen Beckett (Dr Matt Ramsden in Coronation Street) who went to RADA at the same time as him. The pair play business partners who go on a boating holiday with their wives without realising the treacherous waters ahead.

"My family are coming to see me when the kids are on half-term. But I probably see more of my children than the average dad because of the inevitable periods of unemployment.

Hannah, six, and Harry, three, haven't seen any of the Game On episodes, but have seen dad appear in BBC1 family show Down To Earth.

"They didn't recognise the character as me and said 'You're not like that' because I was playing quite an angry bloke and they both got quite upset."

Now Cottle is taking part in the Stephen Joseph's regular Saturday morning Tiny Times Tales shows, , so that his daughter and son can see him more as the dad they know back at home in Taplow, Berkshire.

He comments: "In some ways, the children's reaction is an accolade because I was only acting."

* Way Upstream runs at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre until November 15. Box Office: (01723) 37054