It was the corset that really brought it home.

That and the fishnets. Cinched into Frank N Furter’s raunchy little basque, and not much else, David Bedella stared into a mirror and saw “this iconic look that I’d been aware of from watching The Rocky Horror Show in my teen years. And I remember thinking, ‘Who would have dreamed I’d be standing like this, with Sue Blane, the original designer on the show, putting me in the same costume that she created for Tim Curry’. That’s such a thrill.”

And clearly enough of a thrill to bring Bedella back into the role – and the corset – for a second time, heading the current tour of the cult musical which comes to Glasgow later this month.

Surely a 16-month stint on the road with the 2006/2007 British tour of The Rocky Horror Show took some of the edge off that initial sense of thrill and amazement? Bedella is refreshingly candid, and not a little blasé about the buzz that comes with being one of the most universally adored transvestites in recent stage and screen history.

“For the first few performances,” he says, “you don’t really feel the audience at all, because you’re so bound up in the, ‘What am I doing here?’ panic that’s raging through your body. But about a week in, when I came through those doors for Frank’s first entrance, I could hear this roar, like a wall of sound, and it’s adoration. For you, for the character. And it’s so amazing.

“Then you start to luxuriate in it. It’s a real high and you get so used to it. To be honest, at the end of the last tour, I wondered a lot about what it was going to be like not having hundreds of people screaming for me every day, not having that kind of affirmation that what you’re doing on-stage is making all those people happy. And actors, as you know, are mostly very insecure, so are you surprised that I wanted to come back and be Frank again?”

Bedella is laughing as he says this, but ask him if there’s a downside to all this heady attention and he won’t deny that the “once in a lifetime” role of Frank is a tough call. “You get to be

everything from outrageously comic, arrogant and camp to profound and heart-wrenching. But that takes a lot of energy.

“He’s screaming and yelling full-on most of the time he’s on stage, he’s singing rock’n’roll – and it’s at the top of my register, so it’s very hard – therefore it’s always a challenge. And I do find that my own energy level seems to influence that of the whole show. So if I don’t come on like crazy, it can start to flag and feel sluggish. There is that responsibility too.”

Given the Rocky Horror fanbase can act as if they are the show – not just prone to singing and dancing The Time Warp but to chime in with the dialogue while producing their own props – doesn’t that interfere with Bedella’s own performance?

Again, he’s open and forthright. “It’s now become such an integral part of the whole experience that I think we might worry if it didn’t happen. And it makes for a lot of fun. People get all dressed up and let their hair down: there’s a sense of release, it’s brilliant. It’s one of the reasons, I think, why the show has proved so successful and lasted so long – it’s 30 years now, and probably always on a stage somewhere in the world.”

He leans back in his chair, takes a moment to choose his words, then continues. “With some audiences, or rather with some groups of people in an audience, that searching for release goes too far, and to be honest, that can get truly horrific.

“It’s usually when people drink too much. They forget, or maybe don’t care that there are other people round about who want to watch the performance. They seem to think they’re at their own party. So you do have to try and control that, keep them in line. Because the majority of people love the participation, and when you can get it going well, it just adds to the enjoyment.”

If some audiences can be a mite troublesome, at some performances their rowdiness is nothing compared to the stushie that greeted Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Bedella, who won a 2004 Olivier Award for his portrayal of Satan in the controversial musical, not only recalls the hostility that howled from protesters who hadn’t even seen the show, he also remembers the focus that was placed on his own faith.

“Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the fact that I’m a devout Christian,” he says. “They’d want to know, ‘How do you manage to make these things meet in the middle?’

“Well, we’re all exploring life, trying to make our way, trying to judge what’s good and bad. I think I’m just willing to get out there and wrestle with the big stuff. Not be blinkered. And with Jerry Springer, the issues we

were grappling with were questions everybody should be asking themselves.

“So much of the antagonism was stemming from ignorance. I’d find myself face to face with people who had never listened to it, never read it, never seen the show. I’d be met with, ‘I don’t need to, to know that it’s wrong’.

“And it was upsetting to me, being Christian, that we couldn’t even have an informed conversation about any of it. But what it did do was remind me of how much impact a show – and a performer – can have on society. The entertainment industry does hold great sway over people’s minds and their lives.”

Further proof of this came when he swapped a medic’s white coat for Frank’s corset. Followers of BBC 1’s Holby City had come to recognise Bedella as plastic surgeon Dr Carlos Fashola. Was this sex-obsessed transvestite in slinky scanties the real reason Carlos had walked out of Holby?

“It was genuinely very touching,” is how he describes the stage-door fans who quizzed him about Carlos. “In a way it’s like the investment audiences make in Frank. He has to have this huge, slick facade that screams, ‘I’m brilliant, don’t screw with me,’ but beneath that facade are all these other things, the vulnerabilities, that an audience can identify with.

“The audience is able to love him for all of his outlandish behaviour because they know what anger, hurt and insecurity can do to all of us. Do I like him? Oh, once I got used to the basque. Actually, I love him. And for his frailties most of all. And for the way he encourages people to really let go, be flamboyant and dress up if they want to, have a brilliant time and go home feeling happy that they’ve had a great night out.”

The Rocky Horror Show is on at King’s Theatre, Glasgow, from Monday – November 28.