Suffering fools gladly is the least of Barrie Rutter's worries. The award-winning Northern Broadsides artistic director talks to Viv Hardwick about his views on theatre, touring, funding and how he was dropped from TV's Fat Friends cast by mistake.

SO what is the feistiest theatre company boss in the North going to lecture the audiences of Newcastle about? Well the lack of a booking for his new Alan Plater-commissioned play for a start. Northern Broadsides boss Barrie Rutter, having also vented his feelings about being axed by mistake from popular TV series Fat Friends, actually refuses to go beyond "there was a bit of a mess up and I ended up with just a one night booking instead".

The one night turned out to be Newcastle Theatre Royal's keynote Annual C P Taylor Lecture, but Rutter makes it clear he'd have preferred a few dates for his twin tour of Shakespeare's Comedy Of Errors and Plater's take-off of the Bard called Sweet William.

"I'd have thought a play by Alan Plater would have been ideal for Newcastle audiences, but it wasn't to be. You'll have to ask Peter (Sarah) - general manager of the Theatre Royal - what went wrong," he growls.

The audience for his Monday, March 7, talk at the Theatre Royal are certainly being promised: "Some of my beefs about theatre, because there's a lot of things which happen that I hate."

Asked if his comments will be aimed at anyone in particular and he responds: "Anyone that disagrees with me."

What is agreed is that Hull-born Rutter has spent 14 years forging a successfully company at Dean Clough Mill, Halifax, where he's proud to pay "above Equity rate wages" to a cast of 14 plus backstage support.

"That's why so many people like to come back and work for us," Rutter adds.

In 2000, his efforts saw him awarded a £100,000 Creative Briton prize to spend on Northern Broadsides. Typically, this particular mouth of the Humber says: "Well, 2000 was a long time ago and it was the last funding we got of that kind. We're on a grant from Yorkshire Arts, but we've never been in a situation where we've lost money since 1992."

And that's not bad for an artistic director who has to find anything up to £23,000 to keep his shows on the road during a tour.

Rutter isn't even really short of venues seeking his company's blend of Northern dialects and simple sets which focus attention on the ability of the actors. The tour started last week and Rutter will be racing up from Guildford to give his lecture before returning to places like the "other" Newcastle - under Lyme - and Leeds' West Yorkshire Playhouse, London's Greenwhich Theatre, the Georgian Theatre Royal at Richmond in May and finishing up at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph in June.

The artistic director admits that he's concentrating so hard on the tour presently that the majority of his 40-minute Tyneside talk will be from memory and he's looking for around 20 minutes of questions to complete the evening.

"Mostly I will be discussing what I love about being on a stage and what I don't like when I'm working in the classical world. For example, I'm not one of the supporters of the new technology being used in our industry, I'm not a CGI (computer generated image) fan," says Rutter who accepts that this does have impact on the cinema and TV screen but argues that it's no substitute for the ability of the actor.

His opinions certainly impressed Jarrow-born playwright and creator of TV's The Beiderbecke Affair Alan Plater, although the two didn't get off to a particularly good start. Rutter read an article by Plater where he mentioned exploring the influences on Shakespeare and the Northern Broadsides boss contacted him suggesting that he should get on and write something.

"He wasn't very happy at first about being told what to do, but he was quite taken with the idea of writing for a large cast because he's never written for as many as 14 people before," explains Rutter who has ended up with a boozy romp in an Elizabethan East End pub where Shakespeare meets up with a group of friends bearing an uncanny resemblance to the characters he has created.

Rutter's input is a figure very similar to Falstaff, while he's happy to take a lesser role in Comedy Of Errors. He says: "Alan is able to use Shakespeare players in this way because his life is a licence to fantasise. What we actually know about Shakespeare could be written on a pinhead."

Far more is on the record about ITV1 comedy-drama Fat Friends where original cast member Rutter, as Big 'n' Battered fish and chip shop owner Douglas Simpson, has been left behind in Spain by wife Betty (played by Alison Steadman).

Rutter, who has earned rave reviews for her portrayal of Douglas over four series, reveals that the shooting schedule for the Northern-set six-parter ended up with his character being stuck in sunny Spain, ala EastEnders.

"Originally, I wasn't available to do any more shooting because my duty to Northern Broadsides came first. But then the dates changed and I was available, but they refused to re-write the script and they didn't need me at all, so that really irritated me," he says. The door is still open if a fifth series is commissioned from award-winning writer Kay Mellor.

However, the chances of seeing Rutter back on our screens is pretty remote because the actor doesn't audition for parts these days after 40 years in the business.

As it is he's happy to have a cast all speaking Shakespeare in Northern dialect rather than the traditional received pronunciation. Asked if all his actors have been from the North he responds: "No, once we needed a Welsh accent and I hired a Welshman." So what if a Oxbridge-accented graduate fetched up in darkest Halifax seeking work? "I'd tell him to sling his hook and go back down south," Rutter says in that convivial way of his.

* Barrie Rutter's C P Taylor Lecture takes place on Monday, March 7, at 7.30pm. Tickets are £6.50. Box Office: 0870 905 5060

* Northern Broadsides tours Comedy Of Errors and Sweet William by Alan Plater to West Yorkshire Playhouse on April 4-9. Box Office: (0113) 213 7700. Georgian Theatre, Richmond, May 3-7, (01748) 825 252 and Scarborough's Stephen Joseph, June 6-11, (01723) 370541

Published: ??/??/2004