: The Likeliest lad; ORIGINALLY I had been due to rendezvous with Ian La Frenais back in September last year.

Byline: David Whetstone 

An interview had been set up in a bus not far from Middlesbrough's famous Transporter Bridge, one of the main locations for the new series of Auf Weidersehen, Pet. Unfortunately, it never happened.

La Frenais had flown into Britain only to find the airline had accidentally paired him off with a suitcase full of women's clothes.

It was brave of him to fly. This was days after the atrocities of September 11 and everyone was jittery, particularly those connected with air travel.

But courage has its limits and striding forth onto the streets of mid-morning Middlesbrough, clean, fresh but dressed as a member of the opposite sex, clearly went beyond the bounds of Mr La Frenais's bravery. Understandably, he ducked the media spotlight and instead went shopping for some sensible new gear.

So, instead of chatting in a bus --makeshift rest room for the actors and crew involved in shooting the comeback series - we are face to face in the restaurant of a Newcastle hotel where, shortly, a sheepish waiter will accidentally smash a cafetiere of decaffeinated coffee at our feet.

Perhaps drama has dogged Ian La Frenais all his life. He has certainly generated some as the co-writer not only of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet but of The Likely Lads and Porridge. Classics all.

He has lived in California since 1975 and here he is, once again, attaching his name to a series with a strong Geordie content.

Go back only 10 years and the place where we are so comfortably ensconced would have been a damp corner of a long-abandoned concrete building full of pigeon droppings.

To the East and the West and all around would have been the remains of industry, blackened warehouses,the smell of dereliction. This was the Tyneside Bob and Terry, unlikely heroes of The Likely Lads, would have known and it was the Tyneside Ian La Frenais left behind when, not long out of school, he headed for the bright lights of London.

``I left here in the 1960s (it must have been about 1961) but I used to come back a lot. In the 1970s I'd be here for every Newcastle United home game. Obviously I couldn't do that after I'd gone to the States but my mother was still here.''

So would he live here again? ``Oh! God, no...'' His face, serious and guarded up until now, flashes a smile. ``I'm sorry, you set me up for a real comic writer's punchline there and I just couldn't resist it. No, I suppose it's unlikely I'd ever live here again.

``To be honest, it's not even a question of Newcastle. I couldn't ever really see myself living in London again. I love living where I am, although sometimes you do wonder what might have been.''

Ian La Frenais's life seems a world away from the people he writes about.

``I hate these lifestyle questions,'' he grimaces. ``I have a pretty regular life except it's sunny and I live in a canyon. I live two streets from Dick (Clement, long-time writer partner) and at 9.30 every morning we meet at his house to work.

``I suppose I'm fitter than I would be if I lived in England. We work and then at the end of the day we play tennis.''

The story of La Frenais's and Clement's fortunate first meeting in a London pub in 1962 has been told many times. Introduced by a mutual acquaintance, they hit it off.

Clement was a BBC trainee and his production project, result of many a jar with his new friend from the North East, turned into the pilot episode of The Likely Lads.

``We wrote it as a one-off piece for his exam,'' recalls La Frenais. ``We wrote the first two series of The Likely Lads and our first movie when I still had the day job. I was working in market research. I don't know what else I could have done. It was kind of interesting. I suppose I stumbled into it.''

In an old interview he is quoted as saying that even at school he dreamt of being a screenwriter. He looks puzzled. ``I was probably lying. It sounds like the sort of thing you say to someone just to show off.''

Perhaps he was lying when, apparently, he told another interviewer back in 1967 that he supported Chelsea, ``or Fulham when Chelsea are playing away''.

Anyway, he had gone to London after school. ``It's what they now call your gap year except my gap year was looking increasingly like becoming a decade. I was going to go to university but instead I just went to London. I got odd jobs with silly shifts and eventually got into market research.

``I contributed, at the age of about 24, to a book called Scotland: The Vital Market - my first published work.''

He was destined for greater things. At 28, I learn from another yellowed cutting dated May 1967, La Frenais was ``a long-haired, Carnaby-geared bachelor'' with three successful TV series to his credit.

If he then looked like a pop star, these days he still has something of the veteran rocker about him.

The hair's of a thickness and a colour most men of his age would cherish, and it's not worn very short.

Mates with Bryan Ferry and Dave Stewart, he talks affably of Ferry's perfectionism, of the niggling concern that can keep a new number out of the public domain for years. As a well-established writing partnership in the States, La Frenais and Clement can turn their hands to all kinds of things. They have produced TV series and screenplays, and for four years they wrote The Tracey Ullman Show.

They have a reputation as troubleshooters, called in to work on film scripts that need a helping hand. In this capacity, they profited from Pearl Harbor and The Rock.

They have done things individually but mostly, says La Frenais, that turns out to be counter-productive. ``There have been other famous writing partnerships but I suppose it is a bit unusual.

``It has survived longer than most marriages. Dick didn't want to have children with me but the partnership works and has done for a long time.''

More conventionally, La Frenais is married to Doris, an artist, and he has a stepson called Michael Vartan who is doing extremely well as an actor, particularly since he started appearing in the American spy series Alias, playing CIA agent Michael Vaughn.

``It's getting to the point where I'm using his name to get a seat in restaurants,'' quips La Frenais.

If you didn't know, you might not take Ian La Frenais for a Geordie (he was born and brought up in Whitley Bay). The North East accent isn't that strong, although he says it gets stronger as he gets nearer to the Tyne. Then again, there is little trace of an American accent, something other people pick up after a weekend in Disneyland.

``I think it's the vocabulary rather than the accent you tend to latch onto,'' he suggests. And moments later, he is ordering the doomed coffee - decaff because he gets ``so wired''.

He runs through exciting projects he and Clement have on the go. They have high hopes of a screenplay they have submitted to Jodie Foster.

Closer to home, they have just adapted Jonathan Coe's best-selling novel The Rotters' Club into a movie for Channel 4 and are giving a similar treatment to Robert Harris's thriller, Archangel, for the BBC. This all seems to have put a spring in their step.

In the time it has taken to get the British projects off the ground, he says, movie screenplays submitted years ago in Hollywood are still gathering dust.

And all this has happened because of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, something both he and Dick had been worried about taking on initially. ``We thought people would think we were just bringing something back that had run its course.

``But it was such a successful show and all the actors were keen for us to do it. We convinced ourselves people would be interested to find out what had happened to the characters years later.

``It was a major responsibility bringing them all back but we think we've done them well.''

He says there has been talk of another series. ``It has been suggested that we explore the possibility of setting the next one in Cuba. It is a possibility for next year.''

With Auf Wiedersehen, Pet back and Ant & Dec's recent revival of The Likely Lads, what chance of another gilt-edged Clement and La Frenais sitcom? Precious little, according to La Frenais.

``I can't see Dick and I writing a sitcom again. It's not really the format we enjoy. We like to do longer things. I really think you do have to live here to do it properly, to be up to date with all the different references and points of topicality.''

Since Ian La Frenais doesn't have to lie any more to impress anybody, I suppose that's that.

Then again, Jimmy Nail and the Auf Wiedersehen actors proved the pair are susceptible to a little persuasion, so who knows?

CAPTION(S):

TEAM PLAYER: Ian; La Frenais (second left) with Dick Clement (far left) and the cast of Auf; Wiedersehen, Pet; PERSUASION: Ian La Frenais with actor Jimmy Nail while on location for the new series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet which put La Frenais's name firmly on the map