Steve Pratt talks to TV presenter and author Melvyn Bragg about his decision to discuss his long career at York's Theatre Royal, and why he's just a little anxious

After 40 years in television, you'd think South Bank Show presenter Melvyn Bragg wouldn't be nervous about anything. But he confesses to first night nerves about his forthcoming appearance - as himself - at York Theatre Royal.

"You're on stage on your own for quite a while, " he says. "It's more like acting than I have done before. It's quite testing.

I'm going to see how it goes."

What's making him "quite nervous" is An Audience With Melvyn Bragg. He got the idea from writer John Mortimer, who does such evenings occasionally and gives his fee to charity.

Bragg has only presented his one-man show a couple of times so far. "I spend the first half talking about working with people like Olivier, Pavarotti, Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney and the whole range of people I've worked with on The South Bank Show, " he explains.

"There are things you can say to a live audience you can't say on film. Not salacious stories because my programmes centre round their work. I enjoy talking, and they enjoy listening.

"The second half is very much to do with my life and work, and questions from the audience."

He may find it daunting, but he did some acting at school and at Oxford University. "I suppose when you pop up on the TV screen, you're acting a little bit too, " he says. Bragg - or Lord Bragg of Wigton, to give him his proper title - has plenty to talk about to his audience. Born in Cumbria in 1939, he has written both fiction and biography, and worked in broadcasting since 1961, mostly notably presenting ITV's mainstream arts programme The South Bank Show for more than 25 years.

He has, he says, achieved what he set out to do when he was 21 - to make arts programmes and to write. With one or two variations, that's what he's done.

"I enjoy the fact that my fiction got published and is wellreceived these days, " he says. "In terms of arts programmes, I like the fact that you can have someone like Pavarotti, who will be singing to a few thousand people in the Royal Opera House, and you can do a TV programme that reaches millions of people who couldn't afford to see him live."

In much the same way, his 1970s BBC programme Read All About It did much to bring books to the people who wouldn't normally have thought about them.

Making The South Bank Show is harder than it was, partly because he's harder on himself as a programme-maker and also because there's more competition around now.

"Other people can promise what we can't, and the BBC has much more money than us, " he says. "There weren't many arts programmes in the early 1980s.

Now with BBC4, there are more.

Artists like to have a lot of time on screen and BBC4 can give it to them. So it's very competitive, but that's part of it."

In the past, Bragg has been critical of the lack of arts programmes on the BBC. He's glad to see that "they're creeping back", but still wants to see such shows on BBC1 not the minority channels.

He notes that it's a "turbulent time" in TV. "All sorts of things are being squared up. You have to be fairly fast on your feet. All of a sudden we have hundreds of channels and BSkyB is a big player, " he says.

Bragg says he can "chuck in my tuppence" and did that when the Communications Bill passed through the Lords. He feels the House changed the bill for the better.

His next book is The Adventure Of English, a companion to his ITV series which returns next month. Four programmes shown last year "went down reasonably well" and another four will be screened when the book is published this month.

He's also making notes for a new novel, to add to a list that includes The Hired Man, The Maid Of Buttermere, A Time To Dance and The Soldier's Return.

Although he's a stranger to the stage of the Theatre Royal, he knows the city of York. "At one stage the only place in the North my children had been was Cumbria, where we've had a cottage for 30 years. So I took them on a Great North Tour, starting at York, going to the East Coast and ending up in Holy Island, " he says.

An Audience With Melvyn Bragg is at York Theatre Royal on October 23. Tickets (01904) 623568