IF Steve Steen were to compete on Mastermind, his specialist subject would have to be the travel books of Yankee bearded butterball Bill Bryson.

For the third time, the Comedy Store player is performing a stage version of one of Bryson's witty works. Having conquered The Lost Continent and Notes From A Small Island, Steen has teamed up once more with writer-director Paul Hodson, whose new adaptation of Bill Bryson's Down Under visits the Grand Opera House, York, for one night only on Wednesday.

Steen's one-man show is on the road from February to the end of May, as he travels chilly Britain relating Bryson's travel diaries Down Under: a world of lethal Antipodean critters, sociopathic jellyfish, homicidal crocs and lavatory-dwelling death-spiders.

"Bill has been fine about the past shows, and we have met in the past," says Steve.

Is Bill protective of his writing? "He gets full script approval for these shows, so every draft of the script has to be sent to Bill's agent. We've had five or six scripts going backwards and forwards."

Paul and Steve have been preparing the latest stage instalment of Bryson's travels since last autumn. "The tour has gone fantastically well but I'd been more nervous about this show because I knew so little about Australia. I don't know Australia well, and Bill's relationship with Australia is distant, whereas he's had a 20-year relationship with Britain and a life-long relationship with America," says Steve.

Steen has gruadually got to know Bryson - who once lived in the Yorkshire Dales - through the shows.

"When I started doing these shows, and I've done them for five years, I had built up a picture of him that was completely wrong. I had this idea of him being loud and brash when in fact he's laidback and quiet with this fantastic wit. It's fascinating how this quiet man can sit and observe and come up with such venom," he says.

"It's almost a contradiction in a way, and one of the most difficult things for me is to play someone that quiet on a big stage."

Steve Steen in Bill Bryson's Down Under, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm. Tickets: £15 on 0870 606 3595.

Updated: 15:32 Thursday, March 04, 2004