Preview: Rodney Bewes in On Stage And Off, Pocklington Arts Centre, February 1: Harrogate Theatre, February 2

The Yorkshireman's latest one man show is based on the theatre writings of Jerome K Jerome, whose play The Passing Of The Third Floor Back premiered at the very same theatre in the early part of the last century.

"I became interested in Jerome K Jerome when I did Three Men In A Boat, and everyone thinks he only wrote one novel, but he wrote 30 books and nine plays, three of them staged in London and New York, and one was made into a film: The Passing Of The Third Floor Back, " says Rodney.

"If you've ever lived in such a room, that title is self-explanatory. It's three floors up and at the back of the house, so it's not such a good place to live. I love that title and I love the title of this show too.

"The first book he wrote was On The Stage And Off - and most actors spend most of their time off stage."

Jerome had been a clerk at Euston station, and spurred by the hoardings he would see, he liked to attend theatre matinees, duly giving up his £90 a year day job for the actor's life.

"He would earn nine shillings a week if he was lucky, but there were times when managers would go off with the money and Jerome had to pawn off his clothes for the money to get him back to London, " says Rodney.

"On The Stage And Off tells of the trials and tribulations of life as a Victorian actor and it's a story for people who like the theatre. Most roofs on regional theatres are kept on by people who like theatre, and I always think it's miraculous that people leave the telly at their fireside to watch shows. So it's a story of a theatrical fellow by someone who is 'untheatrical'."

Rodney is selling himself short.

He may once have kept people by the fireside in his days with James Bolam in The Likely Lads, but such stage shows as The Diary Of A Nobody and Three Men In A Boat and now his latest Edinburgh Fringe hit, the Fringe First-winning On The Stage And Off, confirm him to be a man of the stage.

"I was at the Assembly Rooms last summer; it was the seventh time I'd been to Edinburgh and I love it as I always think of it as someone else's territory, a Paul Merton or Ben Elton, so I think it's funny for me to do well there, " he says.

"I was told I was 'interactive' in Three Men In A Boat and I had to look it up, and it meant mucking about with the audience, so I now say 'send the latecomers to the front' and I have a torch that I use to point them out."

You can sense Bewes's empathy with Jerome, as he travels around the country with a boat on his roof for Three Men In A Boat or with the set of a gentleman's library for On The Stage And Off in a trailer behind his Ford Mondeo. Jerome, in turn in his story, relates tales of the stage from theatre managers, landladies, stage door keepers, agents and fellow actors.

"Jerome never became a stage star but he was in every type of theatre there is in the book: summer rep, pantomime, Shakespeare, burlesque, tragedy, comedy, farce, " he says.

"He wrote an autobiography too, which I've pinched bits from, where he says that when The Passing Of The Third Floor Back opened in Harrogate, it bombed because it was billed as 'by the author of Three Men In A Boat', so the audience were expecting a farce.

"It's like The Likely Lads for me. Rodney Bewes has been an actor for 50 years but I'm only remembered for The Likely Lads."

As Jerome cast his eye over an actor's life, so might Bewes be doing the same. "I'm very proud of my Ford Mondeo; I had a Bentley in my rich days and now my Mondeo is my Bentley in my head, as I tow my scenery behind me, " he says.

On the stage and off, Rodney Bewes will be an actor to the last.

"I want to be on stage when I finally drop dead, " he says. "I want to be playing a butler, with the glasses clinking as I slip to the floor, saying 'My lord', and then the curtain falls?"

Rodney Bewes in On Stage And Off, Pocklington Arts Centre, tonight, Harrogate Theatre tomorrow, both at 7.30pm. Box office: Pocklington, 01759 301547; Harrogate, 01423 502116.