Ken Morley talks to Viv Hardwick about the undying interest in his Corrie character Reg Holdsworth, and his love of pantomime.

DOUBLE glazing advertising personality extraordinary he may be, but North- East pantomime dame playing Ken Morley can’t escape a role he gave up 13 years ago… that of Reg Holdsworth in Coronation Street.

“It’s quite a strange thing because I was only in Coronation Street for five years and people are still calling me Reg. Even the director (Duggie Chapman) called me Reg all week in rehearsals for Goldilocks And The Three Bears (at Billingham Forum),” says the 65-year-old comedian and actor, musing on the fate of creating such a colourful character in the famous soap’s long history.

“The director was corrected several times, and not by me, about my name being Ken and the next minute he’d forgotten again. But this is 13 years later and even young people are shouting ‘Reg’ at me and they can’t have known me because they’d only have been tiny children when I left. Someone has told them that I’m Reg Holdsworth and that is down to my character,” says Morley.

He recalls Arthur Lowe suffering a similar problem from 1960 after playing Leonard Swindley in The Street for five years where the British public didn’t see him as anyone else and he went on to make two TV spin-offs.

“He needed Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army to get rid of that character,”

explains Morley.

“I think the link is that both were well-written characters who were very truthful and could be well portrayed and seem to go into the depths of subconscious of the viewing public. It’s happened to the greats like Laurel And Hardy right down to people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is the archetypal hero and you don’t want to see him as anything else… even though it’s sheer fantasy,” he adds.

But is he annoyed that Ken keeps disappearing behind the legend of Reg?

“It’s a difficult path to walk because you don’t want to insult people’s best intentions but if they persist in shouting things at you in the wrong name you do feel inclined to put them straight at certain times.

I’m glad I’m not Princes Charles because he can’t have a bag of chips without someone shouting ‘Charley’ at him… and he can’t pretend he can’t hear,”

Morley adds.

The performer actually moved on from Corrie to ‘Allo Allo, Red Dwarf, a starring role in the recent sitcom, Hardware, and C4 satire, Bremner, Bird and Fortune, as well as gritting his teeth for the ITV1 reality series, Celebrity Fit Club, in 2005.

There have also been stage tours and, of course, pantomime, with Morley taking on one a year since Reg, the pompous Bettabuys shop manager, left for a new life in Lowestoft.

“I’ve never done Goldilocks before but I’ve done most of them except Mother Goose.

Usually, I’ve played the villain.

Last year I was Captain Hook at Lincoln and prior to that I was King Rat in Dick Whittington, which allowed me to play someone malevolent with a comic touch. This year I’ve been asked to play Dame Tilly, which I’ve done about five times over the years “In fact, when I left The Street I went to panto in Sunderland where I did both Muddles and Puddles (the Dame) as twins.”

Asked how he enjoys life in the famous pantomime frock, Morley replies: “They do say it’s only a matter of time before you come out of the whole thing as a man or a woman and we’re all gender benders to some degree.

“So men tend to take advantage of the hilarious side to a woman’s nature both from the personal experience and the knockabouts in life. It’s always good fun portraying particularly older or more cultured women.

They get the rough edge of the comedian’s humour… ‘just think, one day you could end up like me’,” says Morley, who is impressed by the pedigree of comics in the Billingham show, from the highly-experience Patton Brothers to Darren Day’s (the Prince) comedy impressions and professional comic Martin Gold’s role as Muddles.

His Dame has been inspired by the North-West comedy greats of Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough. “Les was the pioneer of a middle to late age working class woman who’d eaten everything apart from the cat and was 16st, but was oblivious to the fact that the lack of any teeth or dreadful hairstyle was an impediment to a woman’s sexual desires. The dame never has to realise that she is bordering on the ridiculous.”

■ Goldilocks And The Three Bears runs at Billingham Forum until January 4. Box Office: 01642-552663