LOUIS  Emerick reveals a couple of sliding doors moments that changed his life, that took him from steel fixing to starring in Brookside.
And now the actor has become a staple of hit touring play The Full Monty. 

“I didn’t go to official drama school,” says the actor who grew up in Liverpool’s Toxteth area and now plays Horse in the Full Monty. 

“I worked in loads of different jobs, as a steel fixer at one point, and when it was too cold I’d go inside and do factory jobs. 

“And it was while I was working in a factory one Friday night everything changed for me.” 

Louis began to sing. And that moment altered the course of his life. 
“When we were cleaning up I sang along to the radio over the tannoy and the foreman Arthur Dutton overheard me.

“He then told me a local theatre group was auditioning for parts in Hair (the 60s American hippy rock musical) and said I should go along.”
Louis was excited by the idea. 

“Now, there was a link with this show because my former brother-in- law Paul Barber had been in Hair in the west end.”  (Paul played Denzell in Only Fools and Horses and went on to play the part of Horse in the film version of the Full Monty – the same role as Louis.)

“So the chance for me to follow in his footsteps, even at an amateur level, was really exciting.”

Louis went along to the audition, sang Ben E King’s Stand By Me and landed a part. 

“We did performances in the Cheshire area and it gave me a real buzz,” he recalls. 

But getting the “buzz’ and going on to land professional work is a world apart. Gaining an Equity card was a mammoth task at the time. 

Just before his 20th birthday in 1982 Louis had been made redundant and with nothing to lose, applied for  drama school. 

In another twist of fate, he was accepted but had most of the year to wait before the course began. 

Meantime, already a young father, he applied to local theatres. He landed work appearing in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe with theatre group Contact.

“They asked me about my plans for the future and I told them I was going to drama school but they was offered a full-time position.”
The offer  came just after his 21st birthday in 1984. 

“It was a nice present,” he says with some understatement. 
Louis worked regularly in the business but his stars all aligned favourable it seems when he  went up for a Brookside audition, ostensibly  a single day’s filming. 

“Initially my character Mick was supposed to be white, but I didn’t know that. But I happened to know another actor who had had an audition before me and he told me that Mick was a bit of a prankster.”
Armed with the information, Louis appeared at the audition in character as the cheeky chappy. 

“That worked, and then I discovered the director lived round the corner from where I lived at the time in Manchester. It all seemed to come together.”

The single episode led to TV appearances for the next 12 years. 
“Brookside was a great place to learn,” he says. 

Since then Louis has appeared in a range of work. He also played PC Walsh in later episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, has been cast in Casualty, New Tricks, Benidorm and Waterloo Road.  Louis has been in pantos, straight plays, he’s recently worked on a comedy with James Buckley of The Inbetweeners. 

“I was able to work well on it thanks to my experience in Brookie. It made a lot of it seem relaxed.”

Louis has also appeared in classic gangster film Layer Cake with Daniel Craig and Tom Hardy. He’s worked with Eddie Redmayne in the actor’s first play in Liverpool.  “I also worked with Mark Rylance,” he adds, laughing: “I’m a starmaker!”

But he’s also working continuously, which is what every actor craves. 

The Full Monty is the stage adaptation of Simon Beaufoy’s story set in Sheffield in 1972, when six unemployed steel workers decide to become strippers. 

The film was a major success, taking more than $250m from a tiny budget.  It was adapted into a musical and then a play in 2013.
But of course it’s not simply a story about men taking their kit off; it touches themes such as emasculation, empowerment, poverty and homosexuality. 

“It’s a story that’s relevant today,” says Louis, whose character lands the gig as a stripper thanks to his dance skills.  

“Two years ago 200 workers at Redcar steelworks lost their jobs. You go round the country and you see similar stories. It’s current history.

“And it’s a community story. It’s not just about six guys on stage. It’s about everybody buzzing for one night. 

“We find that’s the case for the audiences. They say it lifts them up, they forget their problems, and what’s wrong with that?”

Louis, who has a Liberian father, has been in the show since  2014, with more than 500 performances to his credit. 

That would suggest he knows the script by now? 

“I still keep a copy in my dressing room,” he says, smiling. “I think it’s my comfort blanket, just in case.”

Is there a little danger in repetition?

“That doesn’t really happen. You’re appearing in different cities, with different audiences and you get different reactions. 

“So that helps keep you on your toes. But it’s also a great story. It’s not hard to get carried along with it at all.”

But he does have to take his clothes off every night. 

“It can be a bit cold at times up there,” he says, laughing. 

“We just have to make sure we’re well lagged, if you know what I’m saying.”

l The Full Monty, King’s Theatre, February 27- March 4 also stars Gary Lucy, Andrew Dunn, Chris Fountain, Anthony Lewis and Kai Owen.