LES Dennis has never forgotten the advice of his career’s advisor in Liverpool.

“When I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Read The Good Companions’ [JB Priestley’s play about a musical troupe living from hand to mouth].

“It wasn’t much direct help to be an actor, but I still find his plays very readable,” says Les, who is making his West Yorkshire Playhouse debut this week in Priestley’s When We Are Married. “His plays haven’t dated at all, and he was a real humanitarian.”

In a co-production between the Leeds theatre and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, Les is playing Herbert Soppitt, one of three henpecked West Riding husbands facing an uncomfortable truth on their 25th wedding anniversary in 1908.

“Ever since I saw Priestley’s Dangerous Corner at the Playhouse, I’ve wanted to work at the theatre; I’m thrilled that my chance to do so is in a Priestley play,” says the 54-year-old comedian and television game-show host, who has branched out into theatre in such plays as Don’t Dress For Dinner, Art, Misery, Skylight and Neville’s Island.

Director Ian Brown immediately thought of Les when casting Soppitt’s role in Priestley’s satirical account of the sanctity of marriage. “It appeared to be a perfect fit; it just seemed like a really great part for him,” Ian said.

Les can feel the weight of expectation, not least because he is performing in Priestley’s home county.

“There’s a responsibility in that there are people who attend each Wednesday’s Heydays theatre group who come up and say, ‘We all know this play; you’re not going to muck it up, are you?’! So your responsibility is to get it right.”

What accent will he be using? “In the script it says Soppitt speaks with a ‘genteel English accent’, but I think if I didn’t do it with a Yorkshire accent, people would think I’d chickened out,” says the Liverpudlian. “So I’m doing it with a genteel Yorkshire accent. I’ve gone from Lancashire over to the West Riding.”

Les took his first theatrical steps with his fellow school pupils Jude Kelly, the former artistic director and chief executive of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and Clive Barker, the metaphysical fantasy and horror novelist.

“We were all in school plays together and formed a group and did some plays after we left, so it was always my intention to go back to theatre, though I’ve had a really lucky career in light entertainment for most of my adult life,” says Les, whose former partner in comedy was the late Dustin Gee from York.

“You only have to look at Bruce [Forsyth] and Des [O’Connor] to see that television is not just a young man’s game but they are the exception to the rule, though there are more older men than women doing it, but I wanted to break out into theatre.”

Do not judge his performances as those of a comedian doing a play, he says. “That used to be what frustrated me at first, when the director would say, ‘Now remember, there’s a fourth wall here’, thinking that I would want to do ‘my act’, but there was no way I was going to do that. I never felt a desire to do it.

“I prefer to be part of an ensemble rather than standing on my own,” insists Les. A cast of 13 in When We Are Married gives him that opportunity.

When We Are Married runs at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until April 25; Liverpool Playhouse, April 30 to May 23. Box office: Leeds, 0113 213 7700; Liverpool, 0151 709 4776.