Actor Andrew Dunn is back on the John Godber production line.

The star of Victoria Wood's hit sitcom Dinnerladies plays sewage man Sammy in the writer's latest comedy Seasons In The Sun.

Andrew, whose family roots are in Pudsey, first made his name as a regular in Godber's plays with Hull Truck Theatre but decided to take a break from the theatre to work in television.

"I have only done about three theatre productions in the last eight years and they have all been for specific reasons. Other than that I've no real desire to go back to the theatre. This came up unexpectedly," said Andrew.

"My partner, an actress, bumped into John Godber in York Design Centre and he said there was a part in it but he didn't think I was the right age at first.

"The character I play is supposed to be 60 but he said if I was interested he could be 50 or 55. He sent me the first half of the script when he'd written it - the paper was still hot off the printer. The fact that he'd written the whole thing in time for the first rehearsal was unusual.

Seasons In The Sun is a semi-autobiographical story set in 1974, with Tall Paul and Spag spending their last summer before university as dustbin men.

"It has to be set then because it's the old-style metal bins that they carry and it wouldn't be the same with wheelie bins," said Andrew.

"I'm the cantankerous old git who has worked there all his life and takes the mick out of the students. It's very much a company production. There are no real stars. That's what the strength of it is.

"We're both from a similar sort of background so I can connect with it quite well. It's very funny and it's also quite sad in parts."

The new play was premiered in Hull and has just started a month-long run at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, which means a return for Andrew to familiar territory.

"I moved to Pudsey when I was one and we lived there just off Stanningley Road till I was nearly nine and then we moved to the North East," he said.

"I still know this area quite well because my granny was down here and my auntie on my mother's side, so I used to come down here a lot."

If Seasons In The Sun goes well then it will be probably go on tour elsewhere in the country - but Andrew doesn't expect to go with it.

"I started with Hull Truck in 1984 and the last play I did for John Godber was in about 1990," he said.

"I'd been doing one or two plays every year since 1984 and I had reached my early 30s by then. It was like I had become known as one of Godber's boys. I couldn't branch out into anything else.

"I was all theatred out because the trouble with Truck tours is they went on for so long. It's very tiring. You just feel wiped out.

"I got to hate staying in people's houses. In the end we rented out farmhouses where we could just go to have a bit of normality.

"I had been doing it for a long time. The problem is you never save anything. As soon as you do finish a job you've not long to live on what you've made until you have to get another one.

"I made a decision and said 'I'm not doing theatre any more unless it's something really special. I want to try to break into television - that's where the decent money is.'"

Just as Mark Williams, now well known as one of the Fast Show team, is still remembered for his "We want to be together" character, so Andrew found TV adverts a profitable avenue at first.

"Immediately after I went to London and found myself doing all sorts, things like delivering cheese," he said.

"What helped me was doing a lot of adverts, everything from Yorkshire Electricity to Crosse and Blackwell. It helped to keep me going."

After landing one-off parts in London's Burning and Heartbeat, Andrew became a regular in the series The Knock about customs officers.

"I did four years of that. The first two series were particularly good because they were about 13 episodes so it kept me busy even though it didn't necessarily give me a high profile," he said.

"I was a regular but in the end they fell into a format where the baddie was always played by a star and the rest of us felt like he was the one who got all the best lines. We were just in the background answering the phone and then eventually saying, 'That's him. Let's get him'!"

After impressing at a first audition when he had to read for Victoria Wood, Andrew was invited to a recall audition which was also attended by other actors who had already been cast - including Victoria Wood regulars who are familiar faces in many of her shows.

For Andrew, being cast alongside the likes of Duncan Preston and Julie Walters was a big break.

"I had never met Victoria before. Getting the job was fantastic and then the way it's worked out since then, with the success of it, for me it's been really good. Fingers crossed, she'll use me again. She writes for people she knows.

"Dinnerladies got mixed reviews for the first series but because of the type of lady that she is, she was determined to make a success of it. She went away and wrote the second series based on characters whereas the first had been more like a series of stories."

Victoria has now called a halt to Dinnerladies, partly because writing was so stressful, according to Andrew.

"She isn't going to do another series - she's leaving on a high," he said.

"She found it really hard. It took two years out of her life. She was constantly rewriting it through the week, right up to the last minute.

"But they might do a one-off follow-on like Tony and Bren in Scotland."

Andrew also found himself unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight last week because of the his apparent facial resemblance to Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

"I was asked to play him on the Rory Bremner show. It was all improvised and I had never done that before but it was quite good fun."

Simon Ashberry

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