West Sussex's newest resident has been entertaining the crowds in Meredith Willson's musical.

When he's not at rehearsals, or doing a show, he'll be at his new home with his wife and two daughters in a village near Worthing.

"It turns out that I will be about 40 minutes away, and we will all be down for the summer," Brian says.

"We have been sorting the house out over the last year. We bought it from a little old lady who was 99. It was in a bad way.

"My wife Anne-Marie's sister lives in Billingshurst and she was explaining that there was this wonderful little village nearby. And we just fell in love with it.

"It's not a million miles away from where we are in Windsor. It's an investment and it's also a nice place to go when we have the chance."

Brian's daughters, six-year-old Lucy and Amy, 11, are at an age where they are still easily transportable, and the switch to the coast can be slotted in nicely with school.

Besides, the first three weeks of The Music Man are pretty full on, after which it slips back to just four days a week - by which time the family will be with him.

"It will give me a chance to enjoy the family and enjoy being a dad.
It will be beach, family, friends, barbecues!

"Easter was the first time we stayed there. We had been down quite a bit sorting it out. It was in a really bad state. Even the roof, we
didn't know, was completely asbestos."

Brian insists his DIY skills don't stretch beyond putting up a picture, but he's thoroughly enjoyed standing there paintbrush in hand - a pastime totally remote from the pressures of the stage.

There are certain parts that you are born to play, reckons Brian Conley. And for Brian, the fraudster 'Professor' Harold Hill is one of
them.

Brian gets his chance this summer at the CFT where Meredith Willson's The Music Man is the big summer musical.

"Cameron Mackintosh said to me many years ago when I was doing Me And My Girl 'The one show that would be perfect for you would be The Music Man'. And that was the seed really," Brian says.

Nothing came of it, though. Then there was talk of doing it on Broadway. Various meetings took place, but still it didn't come off.

And then he heard that Chichester Festival Theatre were thinking about staging the show last year - at a time when Brian wouldn't have been available.

"I approached them and said that if they held on a year, I would be happy to do it."

And so it has worked out - a prospect Brian is relishing.

Hill is a fast-talking conman who hoodwinks parents into believing he can rescue their errant offspring with his supposedly life-changing music programme, The Think System.

Taking their money for instruments and uniforms with the promise of forming a brass band, he skips from town to town before his credentials are questioned and his fraud exposed.

"He has got to dupe the whole town into believing that the kids will all go to pot if they don't support this brass band."

And in that respect, it's a similar business to doing panto, which Brian did so strikingly at the Mayflower in Southampton a few years
ago.

"When I am doing panto, I like to take the audience on a journey. It's escapism. It's 'let's see how much fun we can have in a couple of hours'. There are so many great songs in it. It's just a show that ticks
all the boxes. It has got comedy. It has got pathos. It has got everything."

Brian, who became a household name with TV's popular The Brian Conley Show, and whose theatre credits include Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the title role in Jolson, which won an Olivier Award for Best Musical, will be bringing out the 'cheeky rogue' aspect to Hill.

"He is trying to get every penny out of them and gets found out..."

Brian's daughters Lucy and Amy will doubtless be supportive: "Lucy loves
me doing the panto. We have quite a job holding her back. When I am on
stage, my wife has to hold her down! Amy is a bit different. She is a bit more self-conscious."

Brian can sympathise with that. As he says, showbiz doesn't get any less
nerve-racking with the passing years.

"As you get older, it doesn't get any easier. You still worry! But it's challenges such as The Music Man that drive you on - that and the fact that you are still learning, however long you've been in the
business.

"You never stop in this game. That's what I love about live theatre. It's the thing that makes it so special, and I just love performing.

"It is not all about being in Hello and OK. Those things have never bothered me at all. I have not craved that kind of attention."

Instead it's the audience satisfaction, generating the word of mouth that will pack out the houses.

As he says, if you hate something in the theatre, you'll rush off and tell 20 people. If you have a rip-roaring good feeling about a show, you'll tell just ten.

And that's another of the challenges...

Musicals really do take you somewhere else, Brian says. And that's
the big attraction, the chance to get totally engrossed in the character and engrossed in the music.

"I love the fact that this is a wonderful show and a great story - the
fact he is a total conman and that he can't play a note."

The trick will be to pull off a balancing act. He has got to be charming, but he must also be a villain.

Get it right and you get a great response - far better
than you could hope for in a straight play.

Brian loves the laughter and he loves the tears you get in musicals.

"I don't like polite applause. I don't like polite laughter. I want to see the audience up! I did a play, Elton John's Glasses, about ten years ago, and at the end of it I just felt I wanted to get out there and liven them up.

It got rave reviews. It was very well received. But it wasn't in my heart what I loved doing. I love singing. I love the escapism. In a musical I feel fulfilled at the end of the night. I don't feel fulfilled
doing the straight plays.

There are enough great actors out there to do that kind of thing. There are not many people that do what I do."

The Music Man is at Chichester Festival Theatre, June 23-August 30. Tickets on 01243 781312 or click here.



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