Teaching children to love Shakespeare is easy, says Alex Fellowes.

You tell them that Hamlet is "just like Eastenders" and stage classroom discussions on King Lear in the style of the Jerry Springer Show.

These are just two of the ideas recommended by Mr Fellowes in a new book, written to help other teachers. He has 30 years experience in Bradford schools.

The book, Bilingual Shakespeare, "contains all my secrets," he says.

Mr Fellowes, pictured, was deputy head at Scotchman Middle School in Heaton until it shut last year. Now freelance, he dresses up as The Bard to run Shakespeare workshops at schools in the district. He uses cutting-edge classroom techniques to bring Shakespeare to life for pupils who speak English as a second language.

The bilingual skills of Pakistani children, he says, help them with Shakespeare's Elizabethan language.

"They are great code-switchers and can switch easily from Punjabi to English and back to Punjabi, often in one sentence," he said.

Hamlet is his favourite play, and he finds that children love it too.

"It's such a great story," he said, "It's a posher version of Eastenders."

In his book, he suggests that youngsters studying King Lear could hold a Jerry Springer style studio debate.

"King Lear, his daughters and sons-in-law - with Edmund in the wings - could appear on the Jerry Springer Show to discuss the problems with their dysfunctional family.

It stimulates debate of issues which are as relevant today as in Shakespeare's time."

In his work with Asian children in Bradford, Mr Fellowes has frequently adapted bits of the plays and encouraged the youngsters to use their first language - mostly Punjabi - alongside English.

Updated versions of the classics, with some lines in Punjabi, have been a great success when presented to audiences of parents.

"Shakespeare would have wanted it like that," he said, "The important thing is to help people own Shakespeare and make it their own - it isn't just a middle class preserve. Let's open it out to the whole community."

The foreword to Mr Fellowes' book has been written by Rex Gibson, the editor of the Cambridge Schools Shakespeare series