TYRONE is the impetuous student who can't read but sure can dance in Fame, The Musical.

On the latest tour, which visits York's Grand Opera House next week, this peach of a role goes to Craig Stein, right, who shares Tyrone's gift for dance and determination to succeed.

"The reason I find it easy to relate to him is that I was brought up in the East End of London in a working-class area, when there was a lot of hard work and graft from my mum to help me," he says.

Craig, now 21, began his training at the age of eight with a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School. "My family is quite a musical family, and all I ever wanted to do was to dance and copy what I saw on Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson pop videos. I used to watch documentaries on the Nicholas Brothers, the American tapping duo, and Gregory Hines, and I got to dance with him at the age of ten at the World Tap Exhibition," Craig recalls.

He left the theatre school at 16 and turned down a grant to attend the London Studio Centre in Kings Cross, instead electing to go straight into the profession. "I felt the most I could learn was actually working in the industry: you learn the most from people who have been in the business longer than you," he says.

His favourite performance to date was dancing with Michael Jackson at the 1996 BRIT Awards. Wasn't that the night Pulp's Jarvis Cocker climbed on stage to moon at Jacko as he sang Earth Song?

"There was a bit of chaos, but they'd filmed the rehearsals, so they used that when they broadcast the show," Craig recalls. "It was all a bit cloudy and you just had to let it go and get on with it!"

Fame, Grand Opera House, York, March 7 to 12. Box office: 0870 606 3590.

Updated: 09:16 Friday, March 04, 2005