CHRIS Wallis took a deep breath and agreed to pay "a large sum of money" for the rights to stage The Borrowers.

He then put in "another great dollop" to create his magical marvel of a family show about little people who live in secret under the floorboards.

Faithfully based on Mary Norton's first two books, the production was an unstoppable success in its Manchester debut last Christmas, and now Wallis has put his £50,000 set, puppets great and small and a cast of 13 actors on the road. Next week, a 45-foot articulated lorry will bring the little people to the Grand Opera House in York.

The list of props sounds amazingly small: sardine-can boat, boot, matchbox bed and cotton-reel chairs. But, of course, everything has to switch between tiny and life-size.

"You couldn't even get a packet of pins in the back of the lorry by the time it's loaded," says Wallis.

"How I wish for the special effects they had for the Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton version on BBC1. It would have been easier hiring the tiniest actors we could find and it's a bit more expensive than having three people sitting on a sofa for a Harold Pinter play!"

Wallis is originally a zoologist who moved into acting from teaching drama in a Liverpool comprehensive. He is a strong advocate for youth theatre and was artistic director of York Theatre Royal Young People's Theatre from 1979 until 1986.

After running the West End's Unicorn Theatre for Children he joined the BBC. In 1994 he become executive producer of Watershed Productions and somehow manages to fit in children's theatre with independent BBC radio productions and setting up a radio soap for Somali on behalf of the United Nations.

"One of my former colleagues at Unicorn was playwright Charles Way and I saw his version of The Borrowers on the small stage at Wimbledon. I could see it was fantastic and we've had reviews to die for ever since," he says.

"I like shows which work with family audiences and I'm appalled, frankly, at the standard of some things that are put on - although not as much as the actors who have to perform them," says Wallis.

The Borrowers, Grand Opera House, York, July 4 to 7. Performances: Wednesday, 1.30pm, 7pm; Thursday, 10.15am, 7pm; Friday, 10.15am, 7.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm, 7.30pm. Box Office: 01904 671818.