David Behrens meets the star of the Alhambra's musical , Boogie Nights.

WASHING POWDER adverts aside, Shane Richie has not been much in evidence on our TV screens lately.

It is, he insists, a deliberate policy.

Two or three years ago, you could barely avoid him. Lucky Numbers, Love Me Do and the Shane Richie Experience made him the most exposed entertainer since Hugh Grant drove down Sunset Boulevard.

"But there's a problem with doing game shows," says the slick and slicked-back star. "Once you become known for them, people stop asking you to take acting roles. Casting directors I'd known for years didn't even want to speak to me."

So it is to the musical stage he has turned - most recently to Boogie Nights, a Seventies celebration which arrives in Bradford on Tuesday prior to a 12-week run in the West End.

"I decided to build up a demand for myself by working as a variety and musical performer," he says. "I'm content to confine my TV appearances to guest spots on other people's shows."

Whether or not British producers value him as an actor, his previous West End success in Grease has confirmed him as one of the country's most dynamic musical performers. It has also attracted the attention of a Hollywood film company, with which he is now negotiating.

"What can I tell you? It's a big movie and they're interested in me. They work on the premise that if I can put 2,000 bums on seats in a theatre I can do the same in a cinema. And Lee Evans has proved that it can work."

Boogie Nights, which sees Richie reunited with his Grease co-star Lisa Maxwell, is a romantic comedy set in a disco in 1977, against the dance music of the time.

"My character's a Jack-the-lad who dreams of becoming a pop star. I had the same dream when I was a kid - we all did - and this is an amalgamation of all those memories of growing up.

"In one scene, we enter on a Chopper bike. You'd be amazed at how things like that jog people's memories."

Richie was a mere 13 in 1977. "I'm more of an Eighties boy, really. But it was in the late Seventies that I started waking up to The Jam, the Sex Pistols and the Stranglers.

"What's amazing is that people look back on those times now and think they're cool. Ten years from now it'll be the Eighties which are back in fashion, and we'll all be wearing our jacket sleeves rolled up again."

Boogie Nights will - fingers crossed, says Richie - cross to America after its London run. "I really want to concentrate on this," he says, slipping into business mode. "I'm quite happy to stay away from my own TV shows for the time being.

"Those game shows - the Shane Richie Experience especially - were ahead of their time. Chris Evans keeps telling me that. But the by-product of having done them is a big audience of people who'll now buy tickets for Boogie Nights."

He understands, he says, where he stands in what he calls the league of showbusiness. "I'm not Barrymore, I'm not Vic and Bob. I've never tried to be part of any trend; I've always done what I wanted to do.

"There's a lot of performers - mentioning no names - who'd be finished if their TV appearances suddenly dried up. I'm not like that. If I never appear on telly again, I've still got an audience."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.