Cilla Black, me arseTelly’s most famous scouser, Ricky Tomlinson, is in fighting form for his Belfast date this weekend. Susan Daly gets an earful about fellow Liverpudlians who lose their accents, people who forget their roots in general, and that obnoxious breed of ‘alternate’ comedians.

Ricky Tomlinson has promised to lay into some sacred cows when he brings his comedy show to Belfast. Cilla Black, for one, better watch her back.

“Cilla Black! I don't like that bloody woman,” is his opening shot. The Royle Family star is on the phone from his home in Liverpool, outlining some of the celebrity anecdotes he plans to share with audiences. By the sound of it, they won't all be pretty.

“I knew Cilla Black's parents when I was growing up and they were lovely, lovely people. Real grafters. They didn't forget themselves — unlike their bloody daughter,” says an outraged Ricky, warming to his theme.

It's a bit of a shock to hear one English national treasure have a good old-fashioned bitch about another. It's also highly refreshing in a business where air kisses and luvvie two-facedness reign supreme.

He's saving his worst comments about Cilla for the show. The unexpurgated rant about his fellow Liverpudlian should be worth the ticket price alone.

Hollywood might also want to brace itself for the Ricky Tomlinson Laughter Show. Ricky tells how he met Robert de Niro at a birthday party for film director Roland Joffe (The Mission, The Killing Fields) during the 1980s.

“Here was this guy standing on his own, looking a bit out of it. So I started chatting to him and I said: ‘Are you in showbusiness?'

“When Roland told me who he was later, I could have bloody well fell over! I'd seen Raging Bull on the telly not a few weeks earlier, and he looked huge in that. But here was this guy, skinny as a bloody beanpole!”

In case you are wondering why former plasterer Ricky would have been knocking about a star-studded party in London's exclusive Groucho Club ... “Oh, I was meant to be in The Mission as a priest, but Phil Redmond wouldn't release me from Brookside. Pity. Lauren Bacall and Liam Neeson were at that party too. And Jeremy Irons. And Harry Fowler.”

Harry who? “He was this great little English actor — ah, you're too young to remember him but he was great.”

This is the endearing nature of Ricky Tomlinson. He's a great raconteur, full of colourful anecdotes, but he's not a name-dropper for the sake of it. He's as interested in the people he meets on the street as he is unimpressed by the big-name stars his late success has brought him in contact with.

“I've got no time for these arseholes, if you pardon the swearing, who strive to be well-known and then don't want to talk to anyone. They won't sign autographs.

“I actually stopped counting the signed photographs after we'd sent out 22,000 of them. ‘We'll stop counting now, Reet', I said to my wife,” he says, bursting into a loud guffaw.

It's THAT laugh, the one that fans of his best-loved TV character, lovable slob Jim Royle, will recognise. The big, spluttering convulsive one that threatens to send him into a fit of choking or farting, or both.

“Well, I AM like Jim Royle,” admits Ricky with more than a trace of pride in his voice. “I'm tight as a crab's arse like him. I'm always going around the house, turning lights off.”

He's laughing at himself again. The truth is, he's a very generous man. With the money he made a few years back from his autobiography, called Ricky, as well as his TV and film career, he has been able to look after his nearest and dearest. Houses have been bought for close relatives, there are two holiday chalets in Spain that all the family use and his granddaughter is getting a car for her 18th birthday (although it's meant to be a secret).

“It'll only be a two-door, mind,” says Ricky. “She deserves it, she works hard at her study and she works part-time. I get a great kick out of being able to do things like that.”

It's a throwback to his younger years, says Ricky, when his mum worked three jobs and his dad was a baker who worked all hours to keep the family of six in a tiny, two-bedroom house. “My den is bigger than our whole house was,” muses Ricky, “so I don't go forgetting myself.”

In July, he compered the huge Beatles Day concert in the Liverpool Arena, which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for local charities. In February, he put on a concert to raise funds for his local NHS clinic, where he had a quadruple bypass last year. (“My doctor's name was Dr Who! Can you believe that?! He's Burmese.”) His socialist back

ground wouldn't let him even consider going private.

“It was wonderful. I wouldn't have got looked after half as well in private as I was by the nurses and doctors in Broadgreen. So we raised about £19,000 as a little thank you.”

The man who has been known to bring his own cans of mild lager to posh award shows and used to love heart-stopping fatty foods, is now “as fit as a fiddle”. Second wife Rita — ‘Reet' — makes sure he eats well.

“I love life now. I wake up at half-six in the morning — and I'm going to be crude now — I do my toilet job. I'm wide awake and it doesn't matter if it's raining, I love the day,” he says. Ricky, with the help of his son and some of his pals, are rebuilding an old cottage by a river in the countryside. “I'm a very lucky man.”

Little wonder that Ricky counts his blessings. In the 1970s, he was imprisoned for two years — much of it in solitary confinement because he wouldn't put his clothes on.

He had been convicted of ‘unlawful assembly’ after picketing building sites in an official protest. After he was released from jail, Ricky was blacklisted from his job as a plasterer. He turned to acting and entertainment.

“I remember the bailiffs turning up to repossess my house. I know what it is to have been in the gutter and have nothing. To live in one room over a boxing club and then to come back and make a million pounds, well ...” For once, Ricky Tomlinson is stumped for words.

He's now campaigning to have his conviction — and those of others jailed with him at the time — overturned.

Large chunks of his file have been blanked out for purposes of ‘national security’, he says he has been told, and he feels there was special branch and political involvement.

BBC's One Life programme recently revisited his case. It has been mooted that the striking builders were dealt with harshly by the Conservative government of the day as a warning to other workers considering ‘flying pickets'.

Even at 68, Ricky's disgust for any type of injustice is palpable. “I was in a Conservative party club the other day and I thought, 'Who'd have thought I'd be here?' I still hate Margaret Thatcher. She's a bastard. They were arguing over whether she should have a state funeral, and I said that she should, as long as it's tomorrow.”

That laugh again. One thing is certain: Ricky Tomlinson is not going to waste a second of the good life he has left. He is still passionate about socialism. And he takes nothing for granted.

People ask him if he gets annoyed when random strangers shout ‘Me arse' at him, in honour of Jim Royle's irreverent catchphrase. “I say to them, ‘Are you joking? I love it. That show made me a bloody fortune!'

“I was with Samuel L Jackson when he was making a film over

here a few years back, and all these girls started screaming ‘Me arse' at me and Samuel thought it was crazy.”

Ricky reveals that there is another Royle Famly Christmas special in the pipeline. “I love working with all of them, Caroline (Aherne), Craig (Cash), Sue (Johns on, who also played Ricky's screen wife in Brookside in the 1980s).”

Of course, they will be without Liz Smith's character Nana, who died in the moving 2006 special. “I'll miss her being there. I bloody idolise Liz Smith.”

The quadruple bypass does not appear to have slowed him down in any way.

“I'm a workaholic, and anyway it doesn't feel like work. I can't wait to come back to Ireland.”

His Laughter Show also features a number of his entertainer pals; Duncan Norvelle, Pauline Daniels, Tony Barton.

It's old-school fun. Ricky's not a fan of what he calls ‘alternate comedy'. “I grew up with Frank Carson, Ken Dodd, guys like that. It's easy to be aggressive and not know where to draw the line on stage, but our show isn't like that.”

The Ricky Tomlinson Laughter Show plays the Waterfront Hall, Belfast, tomorrow, September 6. Tickets, £30 and £20, from box office 9033 4455.