RODNEY BEWES tells the story about how, at the first performance of his one-man show based on the novel Three Men In A Boat, he went to the pub opposite at the interval and ushered the audience back to the theatre.

“You’ve had 20 minutes and I’m going to start,” he told them.

These days he’s still touring his adaptation of the Jerome K Jerome classic and still taking positive steps to get audiences into the theatre. I answer the phone and a voice on the other end says, “Hello, this is Rodney Bewes”.

Forever remembered as one half of TV’s The Likely Lads (opposite James Bolam, to whom he hasn’t spoken since 1976, but more of that later), he’s seeking publicity for his boating saga’s date at Harrogate Theatre.

When we finally talk after a delay caused by him having to meet the East- Enders people about the possibility of a role, he’s in a hotel on a wet and windy clifftop in Cardigan. He has a show tonight, he says, if he can find the theatre.

“I keep getting lost all over England.”

He brought the show to Harrogate “a long time ago”, but knows that “it’s still iffy to do something twice at the same place”. The exception being the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he has taken the show for several summers and done good business every time.

“I say this is the final tour, possibly your last opportunity to see it, like a Frank Sinatra or Shirley Bassey concert.

Of course, I’ll do it again and keep doing it until I drop.”

Hopefully, that won’t be just yet, as 2012 will mark his 60 years in showbusiness.

His Three Men In A Boat show began while he was rowing on the Thames. A woman at a lock shouted at him that they needed thousands of pounds for a new theatre and would he do something for them? He shouted back “No”, but as he went up river mulled over the invitation and thought about doing Three Men In A Boat – and shouted as much back at the woman who sold ice creams in a kiosk.

He did it as a reading and reaction was so good, he decided to take it to Edinburgh.

It was a gamble because the festival is “for young people who swear and shout, so for me to go and win a prize was good”.

He’s excited about his EastEnders audition and prompts another tale. “At the interview the lady said, ‘have you been here before to the Elstree studios?’. I said I was there with Robert Mitchum in the pub down the road when Kennedy was shot.

“I filmed a lot of shows at ATV, as it was then. I met Eric Morecambe on the set and wondered what was going on. He said come in the studio, it’s this band and there were four boys. It was the Beatles on the Morecambe and Wise Show. They sang I Wanna Hold Your Hand and I said to Eric Morecambe, ‘they’ll never get on’.

“ I don’t know if I’ll get the part, but it would be such a life change for me.”

Quite how much he knows about East- Enders is unclear as he doesn’t watch TV, not having time with all his touring.

“This morning I had breakfast at 7am and my first interview at nine o’clock. After this interview I’ll drive to the theatre, put the set up and talk about the lighting.

Then I’ll go to bed in the afternoon to get the energy for the night.

“I’ve been home for three days since July. But I’m lucky to do it. Stay at home?

I would hate to do that. I would be so bored. I’ve been in the theatre since I was 14.”

He has another one-man show The Diary Of A Nobody, about Mr Pooter. “I want to do that in the year 2012, if I’m not in EastEnders, because I’ll have been an actor for 60 years.”

For nearly half that time words have not been exchanged between him and the other Likely Lad James Bolam. Like a lot of double acts or people who work closely together, they’ve fallen out for some long-forgotten reason.

Perhaps, I suggest, he could get a part in the BBC1 series New Tricks, in which Bolam is a cast regular. “I don’t know if they would have me,” he says. “But it’s surprising we’ve never bumped into each other.”

■ Three Men In A Boat: Harrogate Theatre on Tuesday. Tickets 01423-502116