The sign on the boarding house door didn't mince its words. "No Irish, no niggers," it read.

"That'll be us, then," thought the two strangers on the doorstep. And off they walked together.

The year was 1961, the place Liverpool. The little B&B in Parliament Street had at first seemed like a good bet for the two accommodation hunters: she from Donegal in Ireland, he from South America.

The sign sent them packing, but at least they had found each other. Three years later, their son would arrive, and one day he would commit the circumstances of their meeting to print.

"Liverpool was a really racist place in those days," says Craig Charles today.

"And it was terribly rough. The recession hit it very badly.

"Do you know, the city's population is half now what it was when my mum and dad met. That's why, wherever I go, I meet loads of Scousers. Norman Tebbit told them to get on their bikes, and they all did."

The star of Red Dwarf is not the first person to use humour as an escape route from the poverty of the Mersey - but he is perhaps the first comedian to recall it so disparagingly.

No Irish, No Niggers is now the title of his autobiography. It is, he acknowledges, controversial.

"It's provocative, I know. But it's also sad. Liverpool was a sad place in those days.

"And it continued to be so into the Eighties. Thatcher tried to rip the roof off the place. Manchester got all the investment and Liverpool was just left to rot. It's picking up a bit now, but only because they couldn't let it get any bloody worse."

Charles' feelings now towards the city are perhaps best summed up by his present choice of home. Somerset.

"I live near a place called Cricket St Thomas, where they filmed To The Manor Born," he says.

"My house is in the middle of a medieval wood. About 40 acres of it. I walk around pinching myself. I mean, If someone had told me when I was a boy that by the time I got to my mid-30s I'd be farming wood in Somerset, I'd have told them to clear off."

His transformation from inner-city urchin to country gent was completed two months ago when he got married. He and long-time girlfriend Jackie tied the knot on a Mexican beach, where she kept him waiting for 25 minutes while she adjusted her make-up.

"By the time I signed the register, sweat was dripping off me and on to the paper," he says.

He and Jackie chose Somerset as their home because they didn't want to bring up their daughter, two-year-old Anna Jo, in London, let alone Liverpool.

This year, however, Charles has seen less of his private wood than he would like. He is currently half way through a mammoth, 150-date national tour, which will soon bring him to West Yorkshire.

As he talks about his act, he slips into comedian mode - and despite having risen to prominence on the alternative circuit, reading poems and tackling dark and controversial issues, there is still something of the traditional Scouse gag-cracker about him.

"My neighbour knocked at my house in the middle of the night, and I opened the door in my underpants. Strange place for a door.

"He said he needed a push. So I went outside and he was sitting on a swing.

"In Liverpool, there were packs of marauding dogs on the streets. We had a German shepherd who'd come and do his business on our lawn every morning. And every so often he'd bring his dog with him."

Is this Craig Charles or Ken Dodd speaking?

"I do see myself as a traditional comedian," says Charles. "It's just that I do alternative subjects.

"I started to write jokes when I got bored with using poetry as a vehicle for my sense of humour."

His present tour, he says, will be his last for a while. Next year he will begin work on a long-awaited big-screen version of Red Dwarf, and a second series of the BBC's futuristic studio game, Robot Wars.

He has also been offered a part in another forthcoming film, on the back of his straight role in Lynda La Plante's The Governor, on ITV.

"People say, how can a comedian be a straight actor? But comics make the best actors. Look at Tom Hanks - he was a stand-up comic for years. Robin Williams, too. I'm not talking about Shakespeare now, I'm talking gritty northern drama. Find your mark, find your light, say the lines like you mean them and go home. That's not so difficult, is it?"

Comedy, he says, is where the hard work lies. "The inflections are so much more important. Even the straight line has to be right to make the punchline work."

But that, he adds, is something he's used to. "I've been on television since I was 17. I'm 35 now. In dog years I'm dead."

Those years have given him something of a rollercoaster ride. He may be a country farmer now, but at one time he was looked on as a common criminal, arrested and tried for rape, although later completely exonerated.

"You've got to be able to play the hands that life deals you," he says. "Life has dealt me some good cards and it's dealt me some bad ones, and you've got to treat them all with the same grace or you become a bitter, twisted mess."

We say goodbye and he prepares to head off to his next gig. It's in Somerset, so he'll be able to spend the night at home. While we have been talking, Jackie has been supervising the cutting of logs, which will be ground down for mulch and sold to the local garden centres.

It is, reflects Charles, a very long way indeed from that B&B in Parliament Street.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.