Tony Roper remembers the Glasgow of old

“None of us had any money,” says actor and writer Tony Roper. “The men all had a drink at the weekend, no one had cars. Visiting relatives in Drumchapel was like having a mini break in the countryside.”

Then, he adds matter-of-factly, was the time his mum whacked his father with a flat iron, drawing blood.

“He was lying on the floor with blood streaming and my mother shouting for the police to come.

“When they arrived, she said her husband had assaulted her, while he was the one lying on the floor with blood pouring.”

As for his aunt, her remembers her dying lonely, wondering why her son had drifted off and rarely took time to get in touch.

“We knew what life was about,” he continues. “I don’t mean that as a badge of bravery, it’s just how we grew up.”

It hardly sounds like these were particularly idyllic times. Some might wonder if they might have been better forgotten.

And yet such is the misty-eyed fondness for times gone by, for a touch of Glasgow patter and for Roper’s lovable hard-working characters – inspired by women like his no-nonsense mother and desperately lonely aunt – that his phenomenally successful play, The Steamie, is set to perform to its largest live audiences ever, three decades after it was written.

Having witnessed the record-breaking success of Still Game Live, actor and writer Roper, 78, is now preparing to direct a spectacular version of his 1987 play on the cavernous stage of the SSE Hydro.

For six shows climaxing with a final poignant performance in the dying hours of 2019, up to 13,000 people per show will be drawn into a tiny Glasgow washhouse with the action focussed on just four stalls where four women scrub away the old year’s grime ready for a fresh start.

Roper says the Hydro’s Steamie will be a pumped up, supersize version of the same familiar simple play, first performed in a small 300 seat theatre, and which a generation grew up watching on television as the clock ticked down the final moments of the old year.

Transforming it, however, pushed his team to become more inventive than he imagined.

“I thought at first we can’t do this,” explains Roper, who has worked on the new version with producer Neil Laidlaw. “The play is set around four stalls in a steamie. We weren’t sure that it would work in such a huge venue – those stalls would be lost in there.”

For months he’s worked with a team that has taken the one-set play and transformed it into a major production designed to engage a demanding modern audience without losing its charm of its much-loved characters.

For the Hydro, Roper reveals, Glasgow itself will play a key role with scenes of the city filmed in the 1950s rewinding time for those old enough to remember the good old days, and showing younger ones what they missed.

The film sequences were inspired by First World War documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, when black and white footage was colourised, bringing a previously monochrome world to life.

“We have scenes that move, the set is not there all of the time, it appears and disappears. It’s quite amazing,” he says.

There are new songs, live singing, a live band and a 1950s dance hall ‘Strictly-style’ sequence as the washing stops so Dolly can reflect on her love of the tango.

“I would be lynched if I cut out things like ‘Galloway’s mince’,” he continues, referring to one of The Steamie’s best-loved scenes. “We have kept the play, but around it is a whole lot of production with the scenes of old Glasgow creating a great nostalgic feeling.

“That’s why I thought about taking this big chance to do this at the Hydro – to give The Steamie extra oomph.”

The revamped show brings together duo The Dolls, Louise McCarthy and Gayle Telfer Stevens, as gutsy Magrit and gullible Dolly, Fiona Wood as the ever-hopeful Doreen and Harry Ward as the lovable drunk handyman Andy.

Mary McCusker plays the despondent Mrs Culfeathers, modelled on Roper’s aunt, old and grieving for a son too busy to call.

Raised in Glasgow, she recalls trekking with her mother to help her do the family laundry at the steamie near The Gorbals and the racket when they arrived.

“We were not living in ideal conditions,” she remembers, “the back green was a midden, there were rats, but we survived on less money because we didn’t have the things that people have now.

“Tony says everything is taken from someone in life – that’s what makes it lovely, there’s a truth in it.”

Raised in Anderston, Roper worked at Bowhill colliery in Fife and Clydeside shipyards before studying drama.

Best-known as the feckless Jamesie Cotter in Rab C. Nesbitt, a recent prostate cancer fight and all-clear has prompted him to slow down. His performing days are over, he says.

“My memory is getting worse and worse. I can’t perform any longer – I’m not physically incapable, but you need the right mental state, you need the concentration.”

So instead, he’s focused on bringing a wash house to Glasgow’s £125 million arena, the first time the play so intrinsically linked to Hogmanay will be performed live on New Year’s Eve.

“The play isn’t about a steamie, it’s about four women,” he says of its enduring appeal. “The women in the steamie are women I met in my life. I don’t think evolution has moved that quick or that women have changed so much from those days. They have the same troubles, strengths and weaknesses that women have had for thousands of years.

“The women go the steamie to work, it wasn’t where they chose to go, they had to go there just as the men went to the shipyards. They made the day go by chatting.”

And he is confident that The Steamie’s fans will respond to its new, bigger version.

“It’s like a favourite song, you know the words, they never change but you still listen.”

The Steamie is at SSE Hydro from Friday, December 28 to Tuesday, December 31. Times vary. Tickets available from www.thessehydro.com/events/detail/the-steamie