FAT Lady contests have gone the way of bubble cars, rickets and black and white telly.

However, actor David Ireland – who’s set to star in upcoming BBC Scotland sitcom Mountain Goats and features in TV drama Shetland – reveals he may not have become a performer at all had he not been involved in one of these rather inhuman debacles.

“I was about four years-old when I went to Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Ayr with my mum and sisters,” he recalls, smiling.

“The entertainment one night was the Fat Lady contest and one of the Redcoats on stage picked a volunteer from the audience to come up and guess the weight of the fattest lady, and that happened to be me.

“Up on stage, the Redcoat asked me to lift the obese lady by the ankles, and of course I couldn’t, and he then asked me how heavy she was.

“Now, I didn’t even know what weight was at that time, so I just looked confused so he whispered and fed me the line ‘She weighs a ton.’ And he kept repeating it until I said it.

“And when I did the whole place fell apart. I was treated like a rock star and invited to sit at other people’s tables.

“That was the moment I wanted to become an actor.”

David, who lives in Glasgow, has become an accomplished actor, receiving huge praise for the likes of his performances in the Citizens’ Theatre production Kill Johnny Glendinning.

But he’s also in competition for the role of Scotland’s top theatre comedy writer.

This week his latest play Can’t Forget About You runs at the Tron Theatre.

The story features a 25 year-old Belfast man Stevie (Declan Rogers) who falls for a 49 year-old Glaswegian, Martha. (Karen Dunbar).

But of course Stevie’s mother (Carol Moore) and sister (Abigail McGibbon) have lots to say about their son being captured by a Scots cougar. And there’s his ex-girlfriend (Naomi Rocke) to factor in too.

And it’s a typical David Ireland play in that it manages to combine the serious with the deliciously absurd. (Other comedies have featured prostitution, kidnapping and babies that look like Gerry Adams - his new Royal Court play).

The backdrop to Cant’ Forget About You is the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and we learn Stevie’s father has been killed by a terrorist.

Somehow, when you add to that a Wonder Woman outfit and an attempt by Stevie’s sister to speak Ulster-Scots, it all adds up to pure entertainment.

Few playwrights can manage this fine balance. David however hadn’t planned on combining acting with writing. But desperate times...

After attending acting college in Glasgow, David, now 38, found there was little work for those with Ulster accents and decided he’d try and write a play.

So he took himself back to his mother’s home in Belfast.

“I found myself signing on while everyone around me was working on a Liam Neeson Jimmy Nesbitt TV movie,” he recalls with a wry grin.

“Every actor I knew was in it except for me. I was really upset. And I felt like I’d stop working. It was a really bleak time.”

His mind, he reveals, became rather crazed.

“I actually thought I would find an actor I know in the movie and threaten him with a knife and then take his part in the film.

“And for ten seconds I thought it was a brilliant idea. But I decided instead to use this idea in a play I was writing , which was later produced at Oran Mor.”

He adds, grinning; “A lot of my plot lines come from an insane ten seconds. Thankfully, I go home and write about it rather than act it out.”

David hadn’t intended coming back to Scotland, but in 2010 he landed acting work at Oran Mor in a Sandy Grierson play David Ireland Will Lecture Dance and Box.

It was a job that was to change his life.

“We had a rehearsal for an invited audience and I had to choose a woman to play the role of my wife, whom I was in love with.

“I looked out to the audience and I chose this girl who was really beautiful and asked her to join me on stage. It was love at first sight.”

A year later, David and Jen were married and the couple now have a daughter.

Now, David combines acting with writing, a split career that works so well.

He has a play in development with the Abbey in Dublin for the Royal Court, he’s working on an NTS production and has written this year’s Tron Panto, Sleeping Betty.

For the moment, all eyes will be on Can’t Forget About You, which previewed in Belfast last year, and has been described (rightly) as ‘riotous’.

“It’s the play I’m most pleased about,” he says of his efforts to date.

Is it autobiographical? “I didn’t have an affair with an older Scottish woman,” he says, grinning, “but when I was a younger man I definitely fancied older woman.

“I loved The Graduate and I always wanted that Mrs Robinson experience so the idea of writing that sort of story, set in Belfast appealed to me.

“And because I now live in Glasgow, I had to bring together both cultures. It all sort of made sense.”

*Can’t Forget About You, the Tron Theatre, July 1 -25.