MIKE Bradwell is directing a Hull Truck Theatre play for the first time in 30 years.

The company founder, in its days on the back of a truck, is at the helm of Tim Fountain’s “outrageous new comedy”, Queen Of The Nile.

“I did a cabaret for Hull Truck’s 40th birthday but the last thing I did before that was at Christmas 1983 at Spring Street: a production of Alan Plater’s The Fosdyke Saga, which I’d done originally at The Bush, based on Bill tidy’s cartoon strip in the Daily Mirror,” says Mike.

“It was a p***-take of The Forsyte Saga, where the cast threw tripe at the audience and people came several times just to throw tripe back. We even made celebratory tins of tripe for the audience to buy but disappointingly they didn’t sell well.”

Mike was artistic director of The Bush Theatre in London for ten years, stepping down in 2007.

Now he is back in Hull, looking back on Hull Truck’s launch and his days as its first artistic director, with an undimmed passion for the importance of theatre.

“It was very much an achievement of its time. What happened was that in the late Sixties and early Seventies, a lot of people were coming out of drama college and setting up their own companies, maybe as many as 200 between 1968 and 1974, like the York Shoestring Company and York Arts Centre opening in Micklegate.

“There was a sense of a movement going on. I set up Hull Truck; David Edgar, David Hare set up Portable Theatre; all touring work, some of it political.”

Why did Mike start a company in Hull?

“That’s exactly why I did it in Hull, because Hull seemed the last place in the world to start an experimental theatre company,” he says. “But, to be fair, I had a bunch of mates that went to the Hull University drama department, including playwright Richard Cameron.”

It was the cheapest place to live and sign on as “filthy dole cheats, as so many musicians did”, recalls Mike, who lived in a run-down house in Hessle, where they would burn the furniture in the fire until the furniture ran out. “We were trying to make theatrical rock’n’roll, taking inspiration from rock bands, and we always claimed rather pretentiously that our two main influences were Bo Diddley and Chekhov.”

Move forward to 2013 and Mike now, larger than life in his hat and garish tie.

“The reason I’m back at Hull Truck doing this play is that I was asked to do it,” he says.

“When Andrew Smaje took over as chief executive, it almost coincided with Hull Truck’s 40th birthday and we talked at that time about doing a devised play, as Hull Truck used to do when we first started, very much in the style of Mike Leigh, who I’ve worked with.

“That was too complicated so we did the cabaret concert with 11 songs and nine scenes with only two days of rehearsals. It was a blast; lots of people who hadn’t seen each other for 30 years getting back together for an exciting couple of evenings last March.”

After a devised play was ruled out on grounds of expense, Andrew invited Mike to “come up with a play”, and having worked with Tim Fountain on such plays as Resident Alien, the two have linked up again for Queen Of The Nile.

Fountain’s play follows the ups and downs of two women from Wakefield who holiday in Egypt in the middle of the Arab Spring.

“Tim has spent a lot of time going out to Egypt to lounge around the swimming pool and he observed what life in Egypt was like, so we got together and have been working on the play ever since.”

Rehearsals were held in Ladbroke Grove in a warehouse without heating, taking Mike back to the early spirit of Hull Truck. “We’ve rehearsed a play about the hottest place in the world in a shed in the snow, so nothing’s changed from 30 years ago,” he says.

“It’s everything theatre should be: dirty and dangerous.”

• Queen Of The Nile runs at Hull Truck Theatre until May 11. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk