It worked for Richard Whiteley - and now, another star of local telly is forsaking his autocue and stepping out on the stage.

Peter Levy, for years the cheery face of BBC North's daytime news bulletins ("Have a good day - do drive carefully") is fronting a live chat show in Huddersfield which, if enough people show up, could become a regular gig.

Declining to put himself "in the same bracket" as Whiteley but describing his show nonetheless as being "in the format of Parkinson or David Letterman", Levy has booked as guests the former Emmerdale actress Glenda McKay and the Look North weatherman Paul Hudson.

"It's a barn of a place, Huddersfield Town Hall," he says. "Not an easy one to fill. It holds about 1,400 people.

"But they've sold 500-odd tickets so far and they only started pushing it last week. A lot of people would kill just to sell that number."

Levy's show is being produced by Radio Leeds, for which he presents a morning show. The station sees it as a way of promoting itself, especially in a town which has recently acquired a radio station of its own.

The format is disarmingly similar to the one Richard Whiteley pioneered on stage last year and which more recently he piloted on BBC1.

"There'll be a series of guests plus some of the regulars we have on the radio programme," says Levy. "And we'll play a version of our radio pontoon quiz, with giant cards.

"It's costing a fortune. The station's making no money out of it."

Though he confesses to nerves, it's by no means a theatrical debut. Levy began his career, at a slight 15, playing light comedy roles on television.

"I was one of Wendy Craig's sons' friends in And Mother Makes Five," he says. "And I did Comedy Playhouse and the Mike Yarwood Show."

But it was the then burgeoning field of local radio which fascinated him and which led him at 19 to apply for a job at the soon-to-be-launched Pennine station in Bradford.

Austin Mitchell, now a long-serving Labour MP but then a YTV presenter and a boss at Pennine, gave him a job. "I was from London and I didn't know him from Adam," he says.

"But when I got to Yorkshire, living in a grotty flat in Manningham Lane, I loved it immediately - and apart from two brief years in Liverpool, I've been here ever since."

Now 44 and about to celebrate his 25th anniversary as a radio presenter, he's moved out to the leafier surroundings of Rawdon - but he has no desire to leave the county.

"Opportunities have arisen in the past to move away but they don't hold any appeal to me. I like it round here and I'm happy and settled. If I got the sack tomorrow I'd just stay in West Yorkshire and do something else."

Such as? "Well, I had a stab at panto in 1987. I was at the Alhambra with Su Pollard and Paul Shane and it was one of the happiest things I've done.

"I can't have been that good, though. It's been nearly 12 years now and I'm still waiting for another invitation."

The Peter Levy Show is at Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturday, June 26 at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from Kirklees Booking Offices.

David Behrens

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