SHANE Richie slides into the hotel restaurant incognito, wearing grey baseball cap and sunglasses, which somehow makes him more noticeable.

He’s the type, you’d guess, who could never arrive anywhere without creating attention.

Long before his Alfie Moon was even a tiny star in the TV soap firmament, Shane Richie was a successful Pontin’s Bluecoat, a stand-up comedian, game show host and a stage musical star.

For a time he could do no wrong, and then for a while no right. His marriage to Nolan Coleen blew up when the QPR fan was found to playing away from home.

Today, he’s in Glasgow to film a new BBC game show and he relaxes over coffee in a city centre hotel to talk about his colourful life and times.

But first, he reveals he’s excited about his latest stage role.

“It’s a great chance to work with Jessie,” he says of Jessie Wallace, his co-star in the Peter James play The Perfect Murder and of course his on-screen partner in Eastenders.

“It’s the first live thing we’ve done on stage and we have to do something that is very different from Kat and Alfie.”

Kat and Alfie had their moments, but essentially they loved each other to bits. The characters in The Perfect Murder, Joan and Victor, would like to see each other in bits.

“They detest each other,” says Shane, grinning. “They’re together out of habit and sadly many marriages are like that.

“The trick is for us is to bring something different to these characters to find different mannerisms, physical and vocal.

“It’s about keeping the divide between the pair, the animosity. And not getting comfortable.”

There’s no doubt Shane will work hard at the role. He’s a grafter who lied his way into working as a Pontin’s Bluecoat when he was sixteen (claiming he was eighteen), who had a touring comedy show.

“By the age of 17 I’d got a stand-up act together. And I enjoyed the attention I was getting with just me and the microphone on stage. “Then I got the hen nights, and all of a sudden from doing a couple of nights with drag acts and strippers I was offered a six week tour.

“It was like Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and was a 17 year -0old earning 200 a week.”

In his Twenties, Shane proved a master of stand-up and TV game shows. He was funny and sharp, and he married a Nolan, bought Rollers and a huge house in Buckinghamshire.

But in showbiz, what goes up almost always comes down. His marriage collapsed after the QPR fan was found to be playing away.

“I had the fame in the eighties, the Des O’Connor Show and all that, the Paladium, my own show, and I was becoming famous.

“Then it stopped. I was still working, but I wasn’t on TV as much. But I realised fame isn’t that important.”

Did he have to buy the Roller and Porches?

“It’s a cliché, isn’t it. I got the million pound handshake from ITV and I bought into all of it. And half a million for the Daz ads just for looking at strangers dirty knickers.

“And I thought it would last forever. But then I came across as a smug bastard and the papers picked up on this. I don’t blame the papers at all for what was written about me.”

Bankruptcy followed, and for a time even Channel Five didn’t see they needed the experience of working with Shane Richie.

Today, he doesn’t claim to have reinvented himself, but he has learned lessons; not to be flash, to appreciate what you have in life. And he carried on working hard.

His professional life turned around when he landed the role of Alfie Moon in Eastenders.

“When it was announced in 2002 I was going into Eastenders one TV critic wrote; ‘If there is ever a reason we should not pay our TV license, this is the one.’

“At the time I was distraught. When it went on it took about three months for attitudes to change. But there’s a part of me understands the attitude.

“I wasn’t seen as an actor. I was seen as being too smug.”

He’s proved to be an all-round entertainer, starring as Danny Zuko in Grease in the west end for two years.

Shane says he loves the adrenalin of going on stage, the challenge of taking on each new audience.

He’s wiser now. And tougher.

But he laughs as he admits he’s not nearly as tough as Jessie Wallace, whom he clearly adores.

“We were talking about the show and how we would work off each other and what I would do in the second half, when she’s on stage more than me.

“I said; ‘I’ll just stand there in the wings showing you my a***.

“And she went ape****. ‘You won’t! You’ll do this. . . ‘

“And I realised she didn’t think this was Eastenders muckin' about Kat and Alfie stuff at all.

“ This is serious. This is theatre. And you know, she’s right. And I’m thinking, ‘Bring it on!’”

•The Perfect Murder, The King’s theatre Edinburgh, February 29 to March 5.