You wouldn't think to look at him that this bearded, six-foot-plus no-nonsense northern Englishman could cut it as an actress. You can't really imagine him as a frustrated middle-aged housewife who runs off to a Greek island to find herself. But playwright Willy Russell is a man of many talents, and when called upon to do a turn as Shirley Valentine, he rose admirably to the occasion.
The stage was the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and the year was 1986. The leading lady, Noreen Kershaw, had taken ill and there was no understudy. Russell had said he would step in if ever Kershaw became unavailable, and he was held to his word. He stood on stage and read the part in his clear, deep voice. The result was by all accounts a breathtaking moment in theatre.
"What happened was we stumbled on to live radio, as it were," Russell says now. He is in Dublin en route to his Liverpool home from the Galway Arts Festival, casual in black shirt and jeans. "People still say to me that the richest Shirley Valentine they ever saw was when I read the play - not because of anything I did, but because they were free, as when you read a book, to imagine it."
Russell had to stand in for more than two weeks while Kershaw recovered in hospital, and the show became something of an event among theatregoers. At the end of the year, the local paper named Kershaw best actress and Russell best supporting actress.
It turned out to be an eventful run, not least when the real Shirley Valentine turned up one night with a gaggle of girlfriends, all turning 40. She had been in Russell's class at school. "My character's not based on her at all. I assumed that the Shirley Valentine I'd known all those years ago would have married and changed her name, but she didn't."
At 53, Russell is probably Britain's most successful playwright. John, Paul, George, Ringo . . . and Bert brought him to London's West End in 1974, when he was 26. Educating Rita played London for two years and then all over the world; the movie, starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters, was filmed in Dublin. The play is now a staple of the amateur dramatics circuit. Shirley Valentine was staged all over the world before being turned into a movie.
And then Blood Brothers took him into a new league. The musical, for which he wrote the music, lyrics and script, is about twins who are separated at birth and brought up on either side of the class divide. It has been running for more than 13 years, taking £50 million at the London box office alone. It has been translated into numerous languages and enjoyed by audiences from Sydney to Dubai. A recent production adapted for the Korean stage came in for particular praise. "Yes," Russell says, "I read a review about what a great understanding it had of Korean culture."
It's easy to forget that Blood Brothers had a ropy start and ran for only six months when it was first released. "It's not the American style of musical, and it's not the kind of sung-through musical that Lloyd Webber had established. It's contemporary, it's regional, it's British. It polarised reviewers, and even those who were enthusiastic about it found it difficult to convey in a review the kind of night you'd have if you went to see Blood Brothers." Terry Wogan came to the rescue, playing songs from the musical and raving about it on his radio show. Soon the theatre was packed out.
Russell's other West End plays include One for the Road and Stags and Hens, which was later filmed as Dancin' Through the Dark. His first novel, The Wrong Boy, has just come out in paperback. It is written as a series of epistles from 19-year-old Raymond Marks to his hero, Morrissey. Marks spills his heart out about the recent calamities of his life, mourning the loss of his nutty Gran, who hated fun and wished she'd married Jean-Paul Sartre. What did the former Smiths singer think of it all? "He wrote back saying how much he enjoyed it - even the jibes."
For such a successful man, Russell is genial and down to earth, chatting with the boy on work experience who has come with the photographer. His designer stubble is neat, his hair grey and wavy. He cuts it himself.
He became a women's hairdresser when he left school at 15, though he maintains he was never very good at it. Later, as a singer-songwriter, he performed in the folk clubs around Liverpool, playing the same circuit as Billy Connolly, Barbara Dickson and Victoria Wood. There followed a succession of factory jobs. At 20, he decided to go back to school to take O- and A-levels. It wasn't easy.
"One headmaster sat me down and said: 'Listen, you failed at school. You did nothing there. You abused the system. Now get out!' "
He eventually found a sympathetic ear, got his exams and went to teacher training college - not because of any great desire to teach, but because he fancied the long holidays to get on with his writing. He lasted all of a year and a term in teaching before leaving to write full-time. "I loved it with the kids. I didn't like teaching. I didn't like the staff," he says.
He met his wife, Annie, at teacher training college. She is doing an art degree now, and they have three grown children. Theirs was a flying visit to Galway, sandwiched between book signings in Manchester and their daughter's graduation, in drama, but Russell says he had so much fun in Galway last year he had to get back. He always enjoys Dublin as well.
"It's changed, as everybody says, Dublin has changed, but there's still a subtle rural-ness about this city which it's not lost. Maybe that's what appeals to me."
He feels language is valued in this country. "I'm not saying that everybody is a poet, or everybody is a writer, but there is a sense that language is something to be considered. What I do love is the 'music' of Irish-English. It's the constant inversion, translating words back. Yesterday, I was signing books and I said to this guy, to whom shall I sign it? And he said: 'The Mug Punter'." He laughs. "The Mug Punter. That's what I'll call all gamblers from now on."
He shares an ear for the rhythms of language with Roddy Doyle, for whom he has fulsome praise. "I just think The Commitments is absolutely, simply superb. The film is great, but the book is just exquisite. And then when I read his rant on jazz . . . well, I think he said it all for me."
Russell is a rhythm-and-blues man, with a heavy helping of Celtic-inspired folk. He grew up in a small estate on the edge of Liverpool. "So we had this urban culture in a rural setting. It was brilliant."
At 13, he was bunking off school to attend lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. A faraway look comes in his eyes when he recalls the 1960s. "We were just about to go home - we had to be in by a certain time - and then the Beatles walked on stage and it was unreal. I mean, you've got to imagine the shock then, when everyone was in white collars and trousers and quiffs. And the shock then to see this . . . hair . . . coming . . . It was like seeing Martians! But they were a great, great r'-n'-b' band in those days."
He was only 14 then; later he would get to know the band members a little. Lennon wished him luck with John, Paul, George, Ringo . . . and Bert, and Paul asked him to write a screenplay about Wings. He joined the band on the road in order to do so, but McCartney had a change of heart and the project fell through.
"If the film had been made and been successful, I think it would have really changed the perception of Linda," says Russell. "There was a great part for Linda. She was so unlike her press."
And that is what Russell will always be remembered for - great female characters. Julie Walters as Rita; Pauline Collins as Shirley. How does he manage to get inside women's skin? He shrugs and says both stories were about him, really, getting an education and then turning 40. Still, he's known as the big girls' Scouse. Collins has been at him for years to write her another role. So will he oblige? "She's already been on to me. She wants to play the granny in The Wrong Boy."
The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell is published by Black Swan, paperback £6.99 in UK