Actor Tom Wisdom is going into uniform to play a World war One officer facing the nightmare of a suicide mission. He talks to Viv Harldwick about the attractions of anti-war play Journy's End and his Mile High exploits on TV.

ONE of the world's greatest anti-war plays, Journey's End, opens it's national tour at Newcastle's Theatre Royal next week and has already created a huge impression on the young actor picked to play the officer leading his men on a sucidal mission into No Man's Land.

Tom Wisdom - "no relation to Norman, but it was my nickname at school" - is actually 31, but looks a good ten years younger and the ideal actor to play a junior officer promoted way beyond his tender years.

The actor has visited the war graves in France and seen that they are mostly for young men aged 18 to 21.

The play focuses on the last days of the war in 1918 when only the lucky ones had survived four years of awful trench combat.

What about someone like himself, would he follow the command to 'fix bayonets' and go over the top to walk steadily towards a machine gun spitting death?

"No, I think I'd have been one of the people called cowards. Probably I'd have gone home, but it's very hard to imagine yourself in that situation. I know that I'd have been completely petrified and they were dealing with this constant fear of never knowing if the

next minute they'd be blown up. It was a horrendous experience, but there was comedy as well because the men had to take their minds off what was happening."

But can the muck and bullets of the battlefield be transferred accurately onto the centrally-heated stage and warm spotlights?

"Well, the staging itself is absolutely fantastic. The designer has created a superb set in a trench, but it's the writing which takes you back to the First World War. My character is a young captain about 21 years old and been in the war for three years.

The men trust him but deep inside he's going through the same fears and desperation and his way of dealing with the situation is to drink. So at some point his judgement is affected and then certain things happen which make him very paranoid and loses his temper easily."

How is he at commanding and ordering other men to do things they don't want to do?

"Well, not too bad when I'm doing this play, but I wouldn't say I was a great leader. But the chance to get up and really shout at people and get all that pent-up anger out is quite theraputic."

The camaraderie between the actors, who include Heartbeat and The Darling Buds Of May star Philip Franks, is in the second week of rehearsal with the cast facing a tour of duty which will last 13 weeks and, possibly, see a short return to the West End.

That's where Wisdom first saw Journey's End, which earned rave reviews for David Haigh and Philip Franks, and

was determined to audition for the tour. Wisdom's advantage is that at 31 he looks years younger and comes from a military background and grew up on RAF bases.

"As a child I never thought it right that my dad should have to salute officers and I hated being told to get off the grass by some young whipper-snapper fresh out of officer training school," he recalls.

Since landing the role of Stanhope the actor has been studying the 1914-18 conflict which playwright R C Sherriff based around his own experiences and events leading up to a German offensive which cost the lives of 38,000 men. As tension in the trench increases as the soldiers face certain death on a desperate mission into No Man's Land, Wisdom adds: "These men are living moment to moment and have no idea that the end of the war is coming."

He says it's the most challenging part he's ever played, but admits that millions of TV viewers have seen him in more frothy roles. Wisdom has dropped out of the cast of Sky's lightweight drama Mile High, but will be seen in the first four episodes as Marco the air steward when it returns on Sunday.

"I'm quite proud that I managed to keep my clothes on," he jokes about the nature of sex lives in the sky.

Wisdom also appeared in Coronation Street for a year as hairdresser Tom Ferguson. Of the experience he says: "It is very surreal to find yourself having a pint in the Rovers with someone like Jack Duckworth, particularly as my family have always been big fans of the programme."

He wasn't dismayed when his contract wasn't renewed, but reckons he'd have to think very hard if offered another soap character having seen the way public recognition imposes on the lives of Corrie stars.

At present his involvement in Journey's End means that Wisdom is currently studying his family tree to discover if any of his own family fought in what came to be known as The Great War.

"It is chilling during the play when Stanhope realises that he is the only man left alive from all those who sailed over with him on a ship three years earlier."

* Mile High, Sky One, Sunday at 10pm

* Journey's End, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Tuesday-Saturday. Box Office: 0870 905 5060

Published: 02/09/2004