WHEN he is not performing Rodney Bewes likes nothing more than messing about with boats. He divides his time between a house in Henley on Thames and a cottage on The Lizard. At Henley on Thames he has a fleet of small boats ? a sculler, canoe, skiff, dinghy and a cabin cruiser, and in Cornwall a sailing boat. He is currently busy sanding down the canoe which was built in 1890 in preparation for copious coats of varnish. When he launches his new national tour of ?Diary of a Nobody? at The Wharf, Tavistock ? a venue he particularly likes ? he admits that the proximity of the nearby canal presents an added attraction. One imagines it would only take a weak-willed moment for him to launch a canoe in the interval and paddle down stream towards the Tamar. When he was touring his previous one man show ?Three Men In a Boat? he shared the stage with a 24ft hull. And it was while performing that he was approached by a member of the audience who suggested dramatising ?Diary of a Nobody?, a comic classic first published in Punch in 1892. ?That was through meeting the audience at the bar after the show. I get such good feedback,? says the hugely affable Mr Bewes. He enjoys meeting his public and is genuinely grateful for their interest in him. He has little time for the egotism of actors, the elitism of luvvydom. You sense given the choice he would sooner be aboard a fishing boat off the Lizard than attending some star-studded showbiz party. ?When I am performing I belong to the audience that night. Someone asked why I do the one man show. When I go to a theatre it is mine for the day. I get a buzz from that. The audience is mine and I have to entertain them. After, I go to see them in the bar ? it?s a bit like the vicar after the service.? He takes the performance and the pre-show preparation very seriously. He gets to the theatre at noon then puts the set together and tells the resident stage crew how he wants the lights set up. ?Then I go to bed from 2pm to 4pm and I sleep. At 4pm I do a dress rehearsal until 5pm.? He then retreats to the dressing room but admits from then on he rarely even sits down. ?I hardly ever eat. I get very nervy. I will be nervous when I come to Tavistock because it is the first date of the tour.? He unashamedly promotes himself as the star of BBC TV?s The Likely Lads ? now released as a special DVD collector?s set. ?I don?t mind that ? you have to sell tickets!? he reasons. Despite the series gracing the small screen in the seventies he is still constantly recognised for his role in it by the public. He was recently abroad when a tourist came up to him and said he remembered him in black and white! His current tour of ?The Diary of a Nobody? features 41 venues from July through to December ? and includes the Edinburgh Fringe Festival during August. ?I love that. I go to places that I like. I book the tour myself and I?m the director and producer. I know where Marks and Spencer is from every stage door in England ? you have to find food!? His autobiography ?A Likely Tale? is released in paperback in August. He sells copies of the hardback after his shows and says he has sold more than the bookshops have. Rodney enjoys playing the hilarious ?Pooter? the character he has adapted into this one-man show from the masterly comic novel ?Diary of a Nobody?. Set in 1887 Mr Pooter, a proud Victorian resident of North London?s Holloway, is shown as a lovable but absurd Everyman whose rose tinted vision of his lot is exposed to risible effect at every comic turn. ?We witness his pomposity, his not so harmless snobbishness and his demented attempt at house improvements. His life, in short, is a series of domestic crises and blunders,? says Rodney. His own father was a clerk and he affectionately remembers him cycling off to work with his mack over his shoulders and wearing his bicycle clips. He had a deep regard for his father and brings some of his endearing traits to the part of Pooter. l ?The Diary of a Nobody? is at the Wharf, Tavistock on Wednesday, July 5 at 7.30pm (Box office 01822 611166) and at The Plough Arts Centre, Torrington on Friday, July 21 at 8pm (Box office 01805 624624).