COMEDIAN and director Mel Smith says he'd love to return to his North-East roots and make a movie in the region. "I would rather work in Newcastle than Hollywood," admits the chubby funny man whose father's family lived in Tow Law.

Smith received many offers of work in the US following the international success of Mr Bean, the big screen version of the TV hit starring Gosforth-born Rowan Atkinson. But turned his back on Hollywood to direct the comedy-thriller High Heels And Low Lifes, which opened this week, in this country.

"They were very silly and poor scripts I had from America after Mr Bean. I hope most sensible people would have turned them down," he says. "The amount of dross being pushed in my direction was one reason I stayed here, to work from England and develop the films I want to make. I'm interested in the quality of the scripts and if it's set in the North-East so much the better."

Smith's late father Kenneth worked in the pits in County Durham during the Second World War. "Like a lot of young boys he was pressed into service, not mining but looking after the pit ponies. He told me he rather enjoyed that," he recalls.

After the war, his father moved to London and married. Mel was born in Chiswick, where his father opened a betting shop. "He had several different jobs before they legalised High Street betting. Then he turned the grocer's shop owned by my mother's mother into the first betting shop in Chiswick."

Mel lived with his family over the shop - a far cry from his current home in St John's Wood with its swimming pool and big garden, and a bank balance that includes the £18m he made from the sale of Talkback, the company he ran with Griff Rhys Jones.

He recalls returning to Tow Law to visit his grandparents as a child. "In those days, when I was a young kid, it was quite a major thing going up there in the days before motorways and high-powered cars. I remember chugging up the A1. It was a seven or eight hour journey.

"The other thing I remember about Tow Law is it's entirely hilly. The football club, whose greatest claim is playing Arsenal in the FA Cup, had a pitch with a one-in-three incline."

The remainder of his father's family now live in Northallerton in North Yorkshire. He last visited the region while touring with TV and stage partner Griff Rhys Jones although he does have another North-East connection - his wife Pam grew up in Easington and Durham, although they met in the South.

"She becomes more Northern the funnier she's being," he says. "Even my mother, who's a properly-spoken middle class English woman, comes out with the odd remark in Northern twang when she's in the right sort of company."

He's yet to attempt a Geordie accent as an actor, although he did have to adopt a Brummie one for the Midlands-set TV drama Muck And Brass. "Brum is a hard one to do and Geordie is a problem too for people from the South. You tend to start Brummie, go into Welsh, then Indian, lapse into Geordie and then back again," he explains.

Smith does make a Hitchcock-like cameo appearance in High Heels And Low Lifes, out of necessity more than desire.

"The actor playing the ticket collector in the scene couldn't remember a single line," he explains. "So I had a bit of a problem. On top of that I needed an extra for the same scene. The idea of getting an extra while this guy was getting his lines wrong - I just couldn't face it. It was 4.30 in the afternoon, so I said to the costume lady, 'have you got a coat of some description?' I'd better do it myself'. That's the honest answer. And yes, I got my take right first time."

Smith is planning his next film now that High Heels And Low Lifes, which stars Minnie Driver and US actress Mary McCormack, is in on release. It looks likely to be a comedy about crown green bowling - "I don't think that's been done before" - written by Tim Firth, who penned the BBC series Preston Front.

* High Heels And Low Lifes (15) is showing in cinemas now.