Booze nearly cost me my career.. ..I drank to get drunk not to have fun; EXCLUSIVE: BRIAN CONLEY OPENS HIS HEART.

Byline: By KEVIN O'SULLIVAN

WE are relaxing in the faded luxury of the star dressing room, backstage at the London Palladium.

All peeling paint and threadbare carpets, there's barely enough room for the small TV set, tiny sofa and fridge full of champagne.

A generous and affable host, Brian Conley offers me a glass of bubbly. Then he joins me in a toast to his success as leading man in the long-running musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with a Diet Coke.

He lights one of the 30 Silk Cuts he smokes every day and proudly announces: "I haven't touched a drop for 14 months."

Cutting out the drink was no laughing matter for a comedian who, for 10 hectic years, was one of Britain's brightest stars of stage and screen.

"I had to get help," says Brian, revealing for the first time how his heavy dependence on booze almost destroyed his career.

"I didn't join AA but I did consult a specialist, because I knew I was drinking far too much. I wasn't lying in the gutter hopelessly drunk but I was kidding myself that those large Jim Beam and Cokes I drank after every performance were just to help me relax.

"I was drinking at least a bottle of wine every day. Sometimes I could get through a couple of bottles just watching TV at home.

"Then I'd drink scotch, which I told myself was just to help me sleep, and I'd wake up with another hangover."

Now 44, Brian's troubles began when his taxi driver father Colin died of bowel cancer seven years ago.

Colin was only 58 and, in harder times, had helped his ambitious son tour the nation's comedy clubs.

Brian started seeing a psychiatrist after suffering panic attacks and debilitating depression but he was also finding comfort in booze.

"I started drinking more when my dad died," he confides. "I was always waking up with a headache and thinking, 'Oh no, why did I knock back all that booze last night?'"

Things finally came to a head when he was starring in the hit Morecambe and Wise stage show, The Play Wot I Wrote.

"We had this silly stuttering routine which always got a big laugh," he recalls. "Then one night, I didn't get the stutter right and... no laugh.

"I'd got shitfaced the night before and I couldn't do my job properly.

"There was a familiar pattern - of me turning in a great performance, going out to celebrate and not being very good the next night because I was so hungover.

"That's when I decided to get help."

Nursing his soft drink and still dressed in jeans, trainers and a pink shirt, Brian will soon change into his stage clothes for another performance of the show he has helped turn into one of theatreland's most successful musicals.

It's clear that he's pleased not to be starting on another night of heavy boozing.

"I was drinking to get drunk," he admits. "It wasn't a social thing.

"Not drinking was tough for a while. But after about eight months I was over the worst and I'm so happy not drinking that I'm pretty certain I'll never do it again."

Lighting up another cigarette - a vice which, half-heartedly, he also plans to quit - Brian inhales deeply and exudes contentment.

A ND so he should - he's paid off so much of the mortgage on his pounds 2million Buckinghamshire mansion that his repayments cost him just pounds 42 a month.

For his 40th birthday, he bought himself a Bentley - to join his four-wheel drive BMW and Golf Turbo "run-around".

But Brian's true love is his family - his wife of 10 years, Anne-Marie, and his daughters Amy, eight, and three-year-old Lucy.

And it was for them that Brian recently turned down the chance of soap super-stardom. "I got a call from the BBC to say they were interested in me for EastEnders. I thought they wanted me to audition for some small part.

"But when I got there, these very important executives immediately offered me this brilliant role."

After months of losing the ratings war against bitter ITV rival Coronation Street, worried bosses were desperate for Brian to play the gangster cousin of Albert Square's popular Alfie Moon.

Shane Richie, who plays Alfie, is an old chum, so Brian went to him for advice.

"We arranged to go for a coffee at a shopping mall in Uxbridge," he says.

"As we walked through the door, there was a virtual riot. By the time we sat down, there were hundreds of people gawping at us.

"That was it for me. I don't need or want that sort of fame.

"I thought of my wife and kids, and the sheer enjoyment of being able to walk down the street without being mobbed, plus the six-day working week, and I knew EastEnders wasn't for me.

"I was very flattered to be asked but I turned them down."

Brian reveals that his decade at the top of the TV tree, and his starring roles in hit West End shows Me And My Girl and Jolson, have set him up for life.

"I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to but I'd get so bored!"

Brian has already taken eight bookings for corporate Christmas parties this year, for which he'll be paid pounds 20,000 each.

Add that to the handsome salary for being Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's mad inventor Caractacus Potts and you'll agree he's doing very nicely indeed.

So much so that no amount of serious cash would be enough to lure him back to a television show that wasn't up his street.

H E says: "They've invited me on to all of those bloody shows. Celebrity Big Brother, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, Strictly Ballroom, Strictly Skating - you name it, I could have been on it!

"I'd go back for the right show but I don't find the idea of playing with animals on the latest reality gimmick particularly thrilling."

Brian laughs about David Beckham's alleged former lover Rebecca Loos and her notorious pig pleasuring session on Five's The Farm.

"I was also asked to be on that," he says, shaking his head in disbelief. Back in the 90s, the former Pontins Bluecoat had a fully-fledged TV career of his own.

He had his own chat show, starred in hits such as The Grimleys, his National Lottery show and Time After Time.

In fact, he was so successful that ITV signed him to an exclusive pounds 10million golden handcuffs deal and afforded him the commercial network's highest honour - An Audience With...

But when his contract ran out two years ago, the Londoner turned his back on the small screen.

And has no plans to return any time soon.

With a wry smile, Brian adds: "I think with the success of Dr Who and the failure of Celebrity Wrestling, TV might have turned the corner.

"But for me, my marriage, my children and the death of my dad have changed my whole outlook."

With that, Brian takes a final drag of his cigarette - and concedes he loves his last vice.

"I should give up smoking and I certainly don't want my kids to copy me," he declares. "But, sod it, you've got to die of something!"

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is playing at the London Palladium. For tickets phone: [phone]/ or check out www.chittythemusical.co.uk

CAPTION(S):

BACK ON TOP: Brian Conley at the Palladium; REWARDING: Brian as Caractacus