From inside a peeling gin palace in London's Soho, two old soaks observed the leather-capped figure strolling outside.

"His name's Orton. He's an up-and-coming playwright," muttered Jeffrey Bernard, the older of the soaks.

His companion, Michael Elphick, made a mental note of the name. It would soon be known well enough anyway, as would his.

Elphick was to become a huge admirer of Orton's outlandish black comedies. But it has taken him until now - 32 years after the writer's murder - to appear in one.

Loot, perhaps the best known of Orton's works, has been revived for a four-month national tour, and is soon to arrive in Bradford.

"I never actually knew Joe," says Elphick. "But I'd always see him around Soho in that leather cap. Very overtly gay - unusual in those days."

Soho, the seedy, neon hinterland of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, was Elphick's back yard in the Sixties. He lived there, and chiefly, he drank there. It almost did for him.

He is a recovering alcoholic, but he recalls the old days with fondness - especially when the discussion turns to the late Jeffrey Bernard, the writer and Soho habitu whose lifestyle inspired a West End play bearing his name.

"He was a great friend," Elphick says. "But I'm afraid everything's changed since the times he and I drank together.

"Maybe it's just me getting older, but the place seems so tacky now."

At 52, Elphick is hardly an old man. But the few years since he was last seen as Boon on ITV on Tuesday nights have been hard ones. Julia Alexander, his partner of 34 years, died of cancer in 1996. Always a fond drinker, he took to the bottle more heavily than ever, and began putting away a litre and a half of vodka every day. Eventually, he checked into a clinic and stayed for five weeks.

Now, as he tours from one strange town to another, it's a challenge to avoid turning for comfort to the nearest pub.

"I usually go to the bookies or play pool - or have a stroll around," he says vaguely.

"In Bradford I'll probably go for a walk on the moors. I like walking."

There is an unmistakable weariness in his voice as he acknowledges the tedium of touring. "A wrench? Perhaps - but it's my job, after all."

There is no immediate prospect of a return to TV, not in his own series, at least. Harry, his last starring vehicle, in which he played a gruff north country journalist with all the ethics of an old embezzler, has long been laid to rest by the BBC.

"I enjoyed that show," he says. "Harry was someone I could get my teeth into - because I've experienced that kind of journalist. I know how horrific they can be.

"Mind you, we softened the character for TV."

He is undecided about the future. "Honestly, I don't know what I'll do after Loot. But I'm happy to be in the theatre. I like it better than telly - it's why I've done so many pantomimes over the years."

He does not, in truth, sound overly concerned. His life now is anchored in Portugal, where he potters about on his boat, an old twin-engine diesel cruiser.

"It's just an old tub. I go all over the place," he says.

"Clive Dunn advised me to go to Portugal, yonks ago. He lives over there and he invited me to stay with him after we did a production of Much Ado About Nothing on the telly. There was this old boat for sale and I picked up on it."

As he sits in an unfamiliar dressing room and waits for curtain up each night, he misses his home. His role, however, affords consolation.

Loot, which was filmed in 1970 with Richard Attenborough and Lee Remick, is a frantic comedy about a chancer who robs a bank with a friend and stashes the takings inside his mother's coffin.

The long arm of the law, in the person of Elphick's Inspector Truscott, is in hot pursuit - making it increasingly difficult for the crooks to retrieve their takings before the coffin is buried.

Elphick's own difficulty of late has been getting through it all without the presence of his regular co-star, the former EastEnder Letitia Dean. She has missed several performances with a mystery illness, forcing an understudy to stand in.

"That's hard work," he says. "You're on your toes the whole time.

"But it doesn't detract from the play. Joe Orton's work is incredible, and very contemporary considering it was written in 1966.

"He's a modern-day Oscar Wilde, I do believe that."

Much water has passed under the bridge since that first sighting of Orton in Soho. It was, says Elphick, worth the wait.

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