SOMEONE once likened Ricky Tomlinson's nose to a satsuma you'd find at the bottom of the fruit bowl. It's true, he's never been the prettiest of characters and admits that in real life, he is 99 per cent Jim 'my arse' Royle - the coarse, flatulent couch potato father in Caroline Aherne's hit comedy, The Royle Family.

Tomlinson, 64, may not be pretty but he is certainly passionate - about everything from trades unions to television, and he talks at a rate of knots in that unmistakable Liverpool lilt.

People have strong feelings about this thickset former National Front member who became a left-wing agitator and great supporter of Arthur Scargill. You either love him or hate him - few are ambivalent.

On the one side, he is a hugely talented, award-winning actor and master of the one-liner who has made audiences laugh and cry with his portrayal of working class characters, from bolshie shop steward Bobby Grant in Brookside, to grumpy dad Jim Royle in The Royle Family.

But many still remember him as the trades union rabble rouser in the national building strike of 1972, when he organised flying pickets and was jailed on conspiracy charges, becoming known as one of the 'Shrewsbury Two'. He served 16 months of a two-year sentence and is still keen to have his conviction quashed.

"It was hell on earth. Unlike Jeffrey Archer - who hasn't been to prison, he's been on his holidays - I can't remember ever being allowed out to have a meal in a restaurant in all my time in prison.

"I was never allowed to wear my own clothes or get a job in the theatre - 99 per cent of the prison population are not allowed that. It's almost as if Jeffrey was the governor of the prison." He broke the rules and he should have lost remission. There's a great class divide in this country."

Tomlinson is extremely proud of his working class roots in Liverpool, although Cilla Black once pointed out that he wasn't born there - he was actually born in Blackpool. He counters: "She took what little chance she had with what little talent I think she's got and she made it and that's great, good for her, but don't keep riding on the back of being a Liverpool lass, as she classes herself, because she's not. She berated me for being three-days-old before I came back to Liverpool, but she hasn't been back for 40 years."

Now he has opened up another can of worms with his autobiography, Ricky, in which he describes not only his union involvement but also his numerous affairs during his first marriage to Marlene, his four-year relationship with the 17-year-old daughter of a friend (who is no longer a friend) and his spats on and off Brookside, the soap which made him famous.

His second wife Rita, a former social worker whom he married earlier this year - the pictures were sold to both Hello! and OK! magazines - is now his manager but even she didn't know about some of the affairs revealed in the book.

Did any of it upset her? "No," she says simply. "What went on then went on then before I was ever involved with Rick."

Was he always a rebel? "I've always been an organiser and maybe a busybody, the leader of the gang," he concedes. Now living in a waterside apartment in a converted warehouse overlooking the Mersey, he has come a long way since his prison days. After being blacklisted by the building industry and labelled a subversive by MI5, he became a stand-up comic and banjo player in pubs and clubs and an extra on TV, before starting his own extras agency.

At the age of 40, he was chosen by Roland Joffe to star in the TV drama United Kingdom and has since been cast as a range of working class characters and union men."I'm delighted to say that the likes of Roland Joffe, Ken Loach and Alan Parker were starting to use real people in real roles," he says.

His big break came when he was cast as Brookside's Bobby Grant, with Sue Johnston as his long-suffering wife, Sheila. Johnston has remained friends with Tomlinson and gave a speech at his wedding earlier this year.

Bobby Grant was a great role, he recalls, but once again trouble was just around the corner and he ended up leaving under a cloud."They were making my character into a whinging, cringing bit of a drunk. I walked off the set in the middle of my contract." After that, his career went, as he says, "arse up", as acting work dried up and he invested in a nightclub in Liverpool which flopped. He ended up thousands in debt and divorced from Marlene after 24 years, with virtually no access to his three children. It was one of his all-time low points. "I had a terribly long break from seeing my children. It was devastating. I used to spy on Katie (his daughter) in the school yard with a pair of binoculars. I've made some terrible mistakes and hurt people and said things I shouldn't have said, and I wish I could take them back but I can't. The only thing I can try and do is make amends."

Years later, Marlene allowed Tomlinson to see his children again. "I had to get to know them again - they'd all grown so much. I was elated," he says.

But his past has a habit of catching up with him. In a recent newspaper article, Marlene accused him of terrorising the boys when they were younger and claimed that, after the divorce, maintenance payments sometimes didn't turn up.

Tomlinson says: "I've been divorced for 18 years, not 18 months. My ex-wife talked about me not giving my kids anything - my kids have had hundreds of thousands. I've had to take legal advice. I'm not having it any more.

"The most hurtful thing was her saying that I surrounded myself with luxuries and the kids and her haven't shared in my success. Well, she hasn't shared in my success but the kids have."

How did his children react? "It's difficult because they are very loyal to their mum. That's to their credit," says Tomlinson. He's had his share of heartache - one of his sons, Gareth, is a schizophrenic while the other, Clifton, has been treated for heroin addiction."But they're great now. Clifton is as fit as a fiddle and Gareth is fine as long as he takes his medication," he says.

Working on The Royle Family made him smile again, he recalls. "It was like a six-week holiday. A lot of corpsing (when one cast member makes another laugh) went on. I can remember Craig Cash being sent off the set to compose himself for laughing so much, like a naughty schoolboy gets sent into the corner."

He is currently working on a new series of the BBC drama Down To Earth, in which he plays the new pub landlord alongside screen wife Denise Welch, to start in February.

Life is looking up for Tomlinson. But he won't forget the bad times."I picked up a little saying in prison - 'Just remember that the blackest hour in your life will only last for 60 minutes' - and that's quite true."

* Ricky by Ricky Tomlinson (Time Warner, £17.99)