Joker a hit in musicals

But ask them which TV shows he was in, and they'll probably draw a blank.

While Wilmot is now a familiar face of pantomime and musicals (Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bill Snibson in Me and My Girl), few could say where they remember him from.

He was a loyal servant to that mainstay of Eighties TV, the family variety show.

He did impressions on the comedy show Copy Cats, led by Bobby Davro, and sketches alongside Hale and Pace in The Saturday Gang.

Today marks the beginning of a two-week run of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, featuring the man himself, at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

It is remarkable that Wilmot has managed to remain in the public eye for more than 20 years.

"I just got my head down and got on with things I loved doing," he explains. "I didn't get into show business because I wanted to be famous or because I wanted the glamour. I just like the job. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a wonderful thing for me to do at that time.

"Doing Regent's Park is not so high profile but I'm prepared to go in there and do the job. And I don't do it because it necessarily pays that well. I can have a good time. You won't see me at all the right dances and functions because that's not something I enjoy. I just love my career."

And that explains the success of Wilmot: he's a hard-working actor without airs and graces, who takes work when he can get it.

Growing up in a friendly council estate in Wandsworth would explain his down-to-earth cheeriness.

"Everyone on my block was known as aunt' and uncle'," said Wilmot, 47, whose father singer of children's favourite I Am a Mole and I Live in a Hole died when he was just seven.

"I didn't have a need to leave my area. It was what was called community'. Everybody knew what each other looked like. It was clean and tidy. If you did something cheeky, a policeman, much more like a real community policeman, would clip you round the ear. Then you went home and your mother did the same because she knew if a policeman wanted to hit you, you must have done something wrong.

"Every morning the same postman and the same milkman came in. And the bus conductor knew everyone on the bus."

If Wilmot is still harking back to another era, it is no wonder that he moved from the comedy world to musicals, light opera and the occasional pantomime and Christmas show. The satirical and biting world of comedy seems a little too harsh for the soft and friendly Wilmot.

Musical theatre is an area in which he excels, and for which he has won national acclaim.

While some of the lines of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic have been rewritten for this production, by the New Shakespeare Company, Wilmot points out that it is still essentially exactly how the duo intended it.

It is his character, Dick Deadeye, which presents the audience with the main difference.

"He doesn't feature too much in the traditional play," he said. "He is there to make clear some of the points that over time don't quite make sense. He is like a Greek chorus a medium between the audience and cast.

"They the sailors don't behave like real sailors at all. He is picking holes in everything they say or do. But it's not ridiculous. The words are the same. The ship is a traditional ship."

Wilmot played Bottom in the company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001, and later the Pirate King in the Pirates of Penzance, which toured nationally for six months.

For the performance run, he has left his Buckinghamshire home and cycles in from Crouch End, where he is staying with friends. He says the area has a fantastic community feel.

Divorced, with two daughters aged 18 and 21, he does not have to leave any dependants behind when he works away from home.

After working in blue-collar jobs in his 20s, Wilmot began doing stand-up after encouragement from friends. He got an agent and began working on television. He mentions an interview on The Six O'Clock Show with Lord Denning, one of the most famous law-making judges of the last century, at the top of Nelson's Column as one of his career highlights.

He does not have any formal training, and recounts making a fool of himself trying to do Shakespeare in front of theatrical luminaries Dame Judi Dench and Alan Rickman.

"I was just absolutely dreadful," he says. "It put me off Shakespeare for a long time. But I'm a convert. Unfortunately, a lot of people think it's something completely different. It's just another play with characters."

Being the everyman of theatre, Wilmot should know.

See HMS Pinafore at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, on various nights until September 10, at 8pm. There are also additional performances at 2.30pm. Tickets range from £10 to £30. For more information and bookings, call the box office on 08700 601811 or visit the web site www.openairtheatre.org