If you happen to see a Ford Mondeo with a trailer being driven by a man who looks like the character Chance played by Peter Sellers in Being There, it is likely to be Rodney Bewes.

Since August, the Bingley-born Likely Lad has been touring Britain with his long-suffering wife "Poor Daphne". She shares the driving - they live in Henley-on-Thames and Cornwall - and helps with the stage set scenery in the trailer.

But she's never seen his latest one-man production, an adaptation of Jerome K Jerome's On the Stage and Off: The Brief Career of a Would-be Actor.

Why not?

"I think she knows me too well. I would be so conscious of her watching it," he said.

Peter Sellers' dad was born in Bingley. John Braine was too. When Rodney Bewes was born 70 years ago, the town had its own identity separate from Bradford. In the film Billy Liar, most of the scenes involving him and Tom Courtenay were shot in central Bradford.

The camera catches the background changes going on, the demolition, the building sites. I told him that part of the city still looked like that.

"Oh," he said. "I'd better not go there."

But he will have to, unless he is prepared to take a big easterly detour from The Dubrovnik Hotel in Oak Lane to get to The Priestley in Chapel Street on Sunday.

"I like to arrive at the theatre in the afternoon and unload the scenery. Then I say, I am going to my luxury hotel to sleep'. I am back in the evening for a technical rehearsal. Then I do the show: 50 minutes, a 20-minute interval, and another 50 minutes. Late-comers and mobile phones are welcome."

He might be joking because Rodney Bewes is a friendly, good-humoured man to interview, without preciousness. By "luxury hotel" he means the hotel that will offer him a cheap rate for an actor. The lady who took his phone call at The Dubrovnik apparently knew who he was.

"She said, Oh, it will be an honour'," he said. Anything that makes his life easier is welcome.

"I am 70 this year and I am doing 50 shows between August and next June. I have no backer, no manager, no booker. I ring the theatres myself. The Priestley is a new theatre to me. Somebody told me, Oh you must do The Priestley'. I want to go," he added.

A lovely big cheque from the BBC - the marvellous Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads has been produced as a boxed set of DVDs - paid for the tour, his second venture into Jerome K Jerome. He did Three Men in a Boat last year.

He said: "This show is very theatrical. It's about a touring actor in the 1880s by a touring actor in 2007. I play all the characters in the company. It's a true story.

"Jerome K Jerome wrote 30 books and nine plays. He was a clerk at Euston station and gave it up to be an actor for three years and then wrote about it, for which he got £5.

"I enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, so I read up on him. This tour is made up of three nighters, two nighters and one nighters. I did 28 performances at Edinburgh this year.

"A very famous comedian was in a theatre next to me. A mobile phone went off when he was performing. He stopped the show and called for the house lights. Then he berated the culprit.

"I love mobile phones. I have a torch on stage. If there are late-comers I go down into the auditorium and show them to their seats. I ask them if they would like a programme - I have a pile on stage. If a mobile phone goes I say answer it, it may be work!' "It's all quite calculated to make it a show. It's good anarchic fun. If you're going to get them out from their firesides and the telly, the lawn and the barbecue, it's got to be fun and special.

"I should be at RADA teaching them, shouldn't I?"

Those who know and love his work with James Bolam in Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' timeless Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads might reply, No, you should be appearing in a third Likely Lads series with the curmudgeonly Mr B.' "Ian and I had lunch, he was over from Hollywood. After a couple of bottles of red we were just rambling. What would Bob and Terry be doing as pensioners? Bob and Thelma would be one of the new middle-class poor. Terry Collier would be driving a Rolls Royce, he'd be in scrap metal.

"This was about five years ago," he said.

Sadly, Bob Ferris and his alter ego Terry have not exchanged friendly words for many years.

"Jimmy Bolam, in a rare interview in The Radio Times about New Tricks, said he didn't like to talk about The Likely Lads because it was dead in the water. But I have a flyer which mentions it because it sells tickets."

That's honest. As I said, there's nothing precious about Mr Bewes.

  • On the Stage And Off is at The Priestley on Sunday, starting at 7.30pm. For tickets ring (01274) 820666.