The brief, bizarre and explosive life of record producer Joe Meek is the subject of a new black comedy reports Charles Hutchinson.

THE meek shall inherit the Earth, but then along came Joe Meek to shoot that theory out of the water.

Before there was Phil Spector, there was Joe Meek, the first independent record producer.

His was a brief, bizarre and explosive life, a story of chaos, tragedy, amphetamine addiction, witchcraft and madness - and innovative hit recordings Johnny Remember Me, Have I The Right and Telstar, engineered in his North London home studio.

His story is the subject of a new play by Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels star Nick Moran and James Hicks, directed by Michael Bogdanov.

Telstar opened in Cambridge this week and plays the Grand Opera House in York next week, with Con O'Neill in the role of the tone deaf Meek; Adam Rickitt as his one-hit wonder protg, Heinz, and Linda Robson as Violet Shenton, the landlady with whom he had a fateful alliance.

"He's one of the great stories never told," says Con, who last appeared in York in 1991, playing another troubled soul, the schizophrenic Woyzeck at the Arts Centre.

"Joe Meek was an exceptional man who changed the face of pop music...in his kitchen.

"If not a genius, he came as close as a mortal man can come to being a genius.

"By the age of nine he had built the first television set in his village in Gloucestershire, and he invented everything to create the music he wanted to make, like recording the sound of marbles being dropped into his bathroom loo."

Was his self-destruction inevitable? "I think most creative people who go out on a limb and use their creativity in an extreme and unique fashion have to have a maverick streak," says Con.

"He never patented his portable tape machine or the microphones he created because he had no grasp of the financial side of the business.

"He was broke, penniless, riddled with fear and guilt about his repressed homosexuality, and he ended up shooting himself in the head, after shooting his landlady a few seconds earlier."

The resulting play is not a musical but a play with music. "It's a very black comedy. Nick and James have a great ear for dialogue, the Cockney banter is like a machine gun, and it's vitriolic, passionate, and very, very funny, and because of the subject matter it's very black," says Con.

"It's Ortonesque, and it's a great shame that Joe Orton never wrote anything about him because he would have nailed Meek's gothic pantomime life."

Coronation Street pin-up Adam Rickitt, meanwhile, can bring his own experiences in the fiery furnace of the pop industry to playing Heinz, the 17-year-old bacon slicer from Southampton who charted at number five in 1963 with Just Like Eddie.

"There were similarities in the control side of the business. I hated it from the moment I started my pop career.

"I wanted out from the day I started, and there I was on a six-album deal, but I jumped ship after only one and there was a bit of difficulty about that because the album sold well, so I had to go through the courts," he says.

Adam sees Heinz as the original Pop Idol star. "Joe Meek was this amazingly talented producer who attracted talented people to work with him in his bubble of creativity, and then along came Heinz who couldn't sing, couldn't play but wanted to be famous.

"Joe should have said 'no, go back to your bacon-slicing job', but he didn't because he took a fancy to him," he says.

"Joe was able to lay down three vocals over each other to cover Heinz's lack of singing ability.

"Now everyone can do that but Joe was the first. Heinz was at the forefront of the pop industry putting a pretty boy at the front and then watching him burst."

Adam has left behind Coronation Street for the second time to pursue other acting opportunities, grateful for the soap profile that enables him to do "something new, exciting and cultish."

"There was no creativity in the pop business for me, and I know what counts for me is creativity," he says.

"I turned down Celebrity Big Brother, saying I was doing this show instead.

"Unfortunately there are now two industries: the celebrity industry and the acting industry, and there's probably more money in the celebrity world, but that's only good for the short term.

"If you can sustain a career as an actor, it has to be better."

Telstar, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0870 606 3590.

Updated: 15:41 Thursday, February 03, 2005