It took a while for Brian Conley to get the hang of playing an overweight blonde, but now the fat lady’s all-singing and dancing. He talks to Viv Hardwick.

BRIAN CONLEY is on the set of TV’s The Michael Ball Show when we talk about his sell-out curtain-raiser for the Darlington Civic season on Thursday.

“Michael and I go back many years. I remember when he was thin,” says 49-year-old Conley, who chuckles about the fact that he and Ball also have a rather overweight blonde in common, one Edna Turnblad.

“There’s a big video screen where the audience will see the highlights of my illustrious career… that lasts about three minutes and the rest is downhill from there,” he jokes.

So was he tempted to dress up as Edna for part of his The Best Of Brian Conley performance?

“We talk about her and I’m interviewed on stage about Hairspray and we also take questions from the audience.

It’s nicer to go out there in a suit, to be honest,” says the entertainer, who admits that he’d never considered a role like it before taking over from Ball in the West End last year.

“I went along to see the show and got a phone call two weeks later. I was aware Michael was leaving and I was invited to audition, but I’d never walked away from the musical thinking ‘oh yeah, Edna, that’s for me. It was something I’d never, ever done. It was so outside my comfort zone that the first night standing here in the wings, just before I went on, dressed as a huge woman, I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous.

“There were no tricks I could pull out of my armoury of comedy. I’ve found her now, but it took a little while. I even had to learn to hold a handbag and the way to walk because you don’t want the audience to see you as a pantomime dame. When I had the fat suit on, I kept putting my hands folded under my breasts and I just looked like Les Dawson.”

Conley, of course, is hardly PC. His last visit to the Civic saw him use a loudhailer to announce that there was a gay in the audience. “I’m not having a real go. I say things like ‘I went to a gay bar and it’s a bit of coincidence seeing you twice in one week’. But it gets me into a whole routine with a megaphone because I just think that a megaphone is quite silly really.”

He says that his long apprenticeship on the club circuit drilled into him that the audience are entitled to their money’s worth. He recalls that North-East clubs docked money if the show ran for 40 minutes instead of a contracted 45.

“I remember one time our bass player leaned his cigarette on the bingo machine and it fell inside. They were calling the numbers and the ping-pong balls exploded and we had to chuck the machine out of a window.

The members were looking daggers at us,” Conley says.

These days, the response to the tour has been fantastic.

“We did a run last year and it went very well and then they said ‘can you do a couple of extra weeks’ and then suddenly I’m doing another three weeks this year, another seven weeks of Hairspray on tour, three more weeks of my own show and then pantomime (Buttons in Cinderella, in Cardiff).

“I’m having a whale of a time because I decide what goes into the show, as director, producer and star.

We’ve got a wonderful vent act in Gareth Oliver, dancers and two singers from Phantom Of The Opera and I appear right from the beginning to the end… and I get the final say.”

■ The Best Of Brian Conley, Darlington Civic Theatre, Thursday. Fully booked, but for returns call 01325-486555