t the end of Brassed Off, Pete Postlethwaite delivers a heartfelt speech, as band leader Danny, to a packed Albert Hall after his beleaguered colliery band wins a national cup.

The band thinks the trophy is what matters to Danny “more than ’owt else in the world”, but he insists they’d be wrong. He now sees that what matters is these men who can “knock out a good tune” but haven’t an ounce of hope left.

It’s a speech that never fails to move John McArdle, who plays Danny in a stage adaptation of Brassed Off, coming to Bradford.

“It always chokes me up, I have to fight against it,” he says. “A crack in the voice is fine, but it’s an important speech I have to get right.”

It’s not the only thing John has to get right. Playing Danny means he is learning how to conduct a brass band; something he’ll be doing for real once the tour starts, when real-life bands join the cast. The Clifton and Lightcliffe Brass Band will perform at the Alhambra.

“Conducting is hard!” smiles John. “The brass music is very moving. One of my fellow cast members, Andrew Dunn, was in the show before and says it’s spine-tingling when the band plays at the end.”

Brassed Off is set in 1992, when Grimley Colliery Band is on the brink of collapse, facing a devastating pit closure. With miners torn between redundancy packages and the picket lines, Danny’s hopes of winning the national brass championships seem out of reach.

Co-inciding with the 30th anniversary of the 1984 miners’ strike, the play blends humour and pathos. With a rousing score that includes Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez and Jerusalem, it celebrates human endeavour against the odds.

“Danny is an ex-miner with a mining-related illness. He’s dreamed of that trophy at the Royal Albert Hall since he was a boy. He’s seen pit closures and disasters and through it all he’s clung to that dream,” says John.

One of the most poignant moments is when Danny’s son Phil suffers a breakdown after losing his home and family.

“Phil was a hero on the 1984 picket lines, but now he has young children, and bailiffs at the door. His family are his politics,” says John.

“This play is unapologetically sentimental, but doesn’t lose itself in sentiment. The pit closures hit whole communities. Miners had been relatively well paid, with pensions, for a few generations until then. Suddenly they lost all that.”

Liverpool actor John is no stranger to portraying a man devastated by job loss. He shot to fame in Brookside in the 1980s playing Billy Corkhill who, broken by unemployment, suffered a breakdown and ended up driving across his neighbours’ lawns.

“Billy was introduced by Jimmy McGovern as a victim of Thatcher,” says John. “Like Phil, his family were his priority and he couldn’t provide for them anymore. He was living under this Thatcher ethos of ‘have more’ and his wife wanted all that. He became desperate.”

Brookside broke new ground in tackling social issues and was a springboard for writing and acting talent.

“I spotted one of the assistant directors’ names on the credits of Breaking Bad recently!” says John. “At its peak, Brookside was powerful and that was largely down to writers like Jimmy McGovern. His writing reflected life, as far as Channel 4 would let him. After Hillsborough, he wrote a scene where Billy’s daughter Tracy sets fire to a copy of The Sun, but they wouldn’t show it.

“This country has always produced great writing – Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff was one of the greatest dramas ever. Now Scandanavia has set a standard for drama that we should be creating.”

Brassed Off runs at the Alhambra from March 11 to 15. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.