Famed for his roles in hit comedies like The Royle Family and Mike Bassett: England Manager, Ricky Tomlinson is soon to embark on a short Irish tour. Hosted by his friend, songwriter and performer Asa Murphy, In Conversation with Ricky Tomlinson finds the 85-year-old Liverpool actor reflecting on his extraordinary life and times, as well as taking questions from the audience on various facets of his story.

The format grew out of Tomlinson and Murphy’s collaboration on Irish Annie’s, a musical-comedy show that has enjoyed considerable success. No doubt, In Conversation with… will see plenty of discussion of The Royle Family, which remains one of Tomlinson’s most celebrated moments.

Written by the late Caroline Aherne along with Henry Normal and Craig Cash – the latter also played Dave Best in the show – the series debuted in 1998, and enjoyed huge popular and critical acclaim for its realistic portrayal of a working class Mancunian family.

I wonder if it’s still the show Tomlinson gets asked most about?

“It is,” nods the affable actor in his thick Scouse accent, during a Hot Press stop-off by he and Murphy. “Especially younger people. I tell them stories about Caroline, Craig and Nana, played by Liz Smith. She was my favourite, I loved her. And then there was Antony Royle, or Lurchy, played by Ralf Little, who’s over in the States now – he’s doing amazing. We went to see a play in Chester the other week, written by David Baddiel, and Ralf was there. It was nice to bump into him again.

“Also, it was nice for me, cos I’ve just written my first children’s book. Asa and another fella are making it into a stage play. The kids love it and we sell a few when we’re doing the gigs.”

“It’s something Ricky always wanted to do,” adds Murphy. “He had certain things on his bucket list, and he wanted to write a children’s book. Everything else, he’s done.”

It’s not Ricky’s only book, with the actor having previously published a memoir.

“When I done my autobiography, my wife Rita said to me, ‘You’ll have to tell the truth,’” he recalls. “The only reason I did was that someone was doing an unofficial one. So I said to me missus, ‘There’s stuff in there you don’t know about me.’ She said, ‘Do it and tell the truth, and let the devil take the hindmost.’ Anyway, it fucking outsold everyone’s! It went to number one for 12 weeks and got nominated for Book of the Year.”

Ricky Tomlinson and Asa Murphy. By Abigail Ring

Going back to The Royle Family – did its success take you by surprise?

“Yeah,” Ricky acknowledges. “In them days, I used to have a little van – it was like a little converted ice cream truck. Everyone used to take the piss out of me, cos I used to drive to me mam’s. I’d slide the window down, and she used to take the mick out of me. She’d say, ‘Just give us a choc-ice this week, son!’ But anyway, the first episode of The Royle Family went out, and I used to go to her house every week to see her. This time she went, ‘Where did you hear language like that?!’

“I said, ‘Mam, I’ve stood on the Kop at Anfield for 20 years!’ She said, ‘It’s a good job your father’s dead!’ But she had three jobs, me mam, she was a grafter. When she worked in the laundry, the women would come in and say, ‘Oh, did you see that last night? It was hilarious.’ And gradually she said to me, ‘I haven’t got a very good sense of humour.’ But no, she was made up in the end, she loved it.”

As it happens,The Royle Family’s enduring popularity was illustrated by a truly hilarious moment earlier today.

“With The Royle Family, the beauty of the writing is that some things are true to life, and you can’t write them,” notes Asa. “We were just coming out of doing another interview there, and this journalist stopped us in the lobby. He said, ‘Oh, Ricky, I’m your biggest fan, and I was in Liverpool a few years ago. And I thought I interviewed you.’ Ricky goes, ‘What do you mean?’

“The journalist goes, ‘No, it was a fella who looked like you, and it turned out it be the doorman.’ He said, ‘And I interviewed him for half-an-hour!’ I said, ‘What was he saying?’ He said, ‘He was just answering all the questions about The Royle Family!’ (laughs)”

With Aherne – also famed for her portrayal of acerbic chat-show host Mrs Merton – having passed away from cancer in 2016, aged just 52, it must have been enormously sad for her friends and co-stars to have lost her at such a young age.

“Terrible,” says Ricky. “And she never told any of us that she was ill. But she had a great sense of humour, and she had Mensa IQ. Her and Craig had a love-hate relationship – they loved each other, but they used to get on each other’s nerves and fight. Then they’d make up. He used to corpse a lot; he’d laugh when he should have been saying his lines.

Ricky Tomlinson and Asa Murphy. By Abigail Ring

NAUGHTY CORNER

“There was a scene where he only had one word to say – and it took him 14 takes. So in the end, Caroline fuckin’ sent him off the set! She said, ‘Go and stand in the naughty corner.’ So he actually had to go and stand in the corner til he could compose himself. But what she didn’t know was that, when he was trying to say his line, me and Ralf were standing in front of him, making faces and putting him off.

“So in the end, they had a wooden cell made – and they used to lock him in til he could control himself! But he’s a lovely fella, him.”

Famously, The Royle Family’s theme music was the Oasis tune ‘Half The World Away’, which is being used as the intro for In Conversation with Ricky Tomlinson. It’s all very fitting, given that Oasis are making their hugely anticipated live comeback this year.

“They’re two nice lads them,” says Ricky of Liam and Noel. “They’re two scatter-brains obviously – they’d fight over anything. But they’re good musicians and good lads. I’m made up to see they’re back.”

Having played in bands in Merseyside as a young man, Tomlinson got his acting break when he was cast in the long-running soap opera, Brookside, in 1982. But his screen roles are but one aspect of his remarkable story. He has also had a long-running involvement in socialist politics, even, at one point, serving a jail term for his role in leading a building site strike in Shrewsbury.

A lifelong Liverpool fan, Ricky regularly attends Anfield with Jimmy McGovern, the TV writer celebrated for dramatising working class stories, such as the Liverpool dockers’ strike and the fallout from the Hillsborough disaster. For both projects, he cast Tomlinson.

“Jimmy phoned me up one night and went, ‘I want you to do me a favour, I’ve written a play called Dockers,’” Ricky recalls. “As you know, it was a big thing at the time. There were even brothers who were divided – some went out and some didn’t. He said, ‘Look here, I want you to play a scab.’ Well, I’d done two years in jail for leading a strike! I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘No, I want you to play the part.’

“And do you know what? It was perfect, cos I could feel myself going through the picketline, and basically giving the two fingers to the lads. Anyway, Dockers went down an absolute bomb. And then I did Hillbsorough, which Jimmy also wrote. He actually uncovered a lot of the stuff that had gone on, which had never been reported. It helped to open the case up again.”

My own personal favourite Tomlinson moment is 2001’s Mike Bassett: England Manager, a Spinal Tap-style mockumentary. The actor plays the titular football football manager, who’s recruited from obscurity to take England to the World Cup in Brazil. The most famous scene occurs when the team are 2-0 down to Mexico at half-time, leading Bassett to give them an absolutely hilarious, foul-mouthed dressing room rollicking.

“I just went for it,” says Ricky of the scene. “But I took them by surprise, cos the lads were all ducking for cover! In terms of all the effing and blinding, I don’t normally swear like that. But I say to people, ‘I’d like to thank Peter Reid for being my voice coach.’ Cos Peter swears terrible!”

Thanks to a few starry cameos, the movie also afforded Ricky the chance to meet some bona fide football legends.

“When Pelé was in it, we had to shoot the thing about three or four times,” he remembers. “It’s the scene where I’m on the bar in me underpants, and I’ve bollocked the lads and told them to keep off the ale. Meanwhile, I’m drunk as a lord, and they’re all fighting and I’m singing. And Pelé couldn’t do the scene. Steve Barron, the director – a real nice fella – said, ‘What’s the matter?’

"And Pelé points at me and says, ‘It’s him, he’s making me laugh!’ But he was absolutely lovely, and there’s a story that follows on from that. I had a photograph taken with him and had it framed, but I never got him to sign it. He was making a visit to Anfield, so I took it out of the frame, and asked a friend of mine to try and get it signed.

“My friend phoned the next day and told me how it went. He said Pelé was in the directors’ lounge, and the police outside were about six deep, cos everyone was there trying to talk to him. But my friend shouted through the door, ‘I’ve got a photo here of Ricky Tomlinson, and he wants Pelé to sign it.’ Pelé opened the door and signed it. So I’ve got that and I’ve also got a shirt, which he signed ‘To Rickey’ – that’s how he spelled it!”

• In Conversation with Ricky Tomlinson is at the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin on April 3; National Opera House, Wexford (4); and Crescent Concert Hall, Drogheda (5).