Eastenders star Steve McFadden talks ahead of Birmingham panto appearances

And he's really, really, really bad.

Oh yes he is.

Oh no he isn't.

Oh yes he is.

Steve 'Phil Mitchell' McFadden is a total rat. He's a dirty rat. Goddamit, he's King Rat.

And from Monday to January 29 he'll be hamming it up with John Barrowman, comedy duo The Krankies, comedian Matt Slack and I'd Do Anything winner Jodie Prenger in Birmingham's biggest panto.

Audiences can expect plenty of laughs, outrageous costumes, wonderful sets and scenery, and some amazing special effects in Dick Whittington.

Steve – and it's so tempting to call him 'Phil' – can't wait.

"It'll be good fun," he says. "I cut my teeth in panto working with Matt Slack. We're good mates. We hang out together and go for drinks. He's been on EastEnders as well. So Dick Whittington will give us the chance to catch up and go for a few beers."

Steve, Matt and co have spent three weeks getting the show in shape, with two weeks of rehearsals and a week-long technical run. "It's all quite luxurious," he says. And it means the panto will be in tip-top shape by the time the curtain goes up on Monday.

Steve's professional career has mostly centred in London. He hails from Maida Vale, learned how to act at Rada and played EastEnders hardman Phil Mitchell at the BBC's London studios. Birmingham, however, may well have put him on the road to his extraordinary career.

Back in the 1970s he visited the Second City regularly to flog perfume and jewellery as he tried to earn a few bob as a Del Boy-style market trader.

"We were up there in the 1970s," he says, walking along memory lane. "I used to work with my dad on the walkway to the Bull Ring. We used to park the old Austin Morris and have a bit of kit in the back; it would be perfume and jewellery. Then we'd do the walkway, between the car park and the Bull Ring.

"I just remember this big wide concourse and we'd sell out every time. If it was raining in London we'd come up at the weekend and sell in Birmingham instead. We'd smash it and we'd have a good laugh with the people."

The gear was straight up Kosher, guv. Honest. And working as an out-of-the-suitcase market stall holder, with his goods propped on crates, helped turn Steve onto acting. Strange but true.

"We had a bit of a Del Boy thing with my dad and his partner. We'd turn the milk crates upside down and sell off the top. I'd always have a laugh with the Brummies. In many ways, that was my first steps into acting, it was the first time I was dealing with the public face-to-face. I got confident doing that. I'd be giving it all the old market trader tricks. There's no fancy prices, all of that stuff. I'd be imitating my dad and his partner and I learned how to come out of my shell."

Not that selling 'hooky' perfume and jewellery led Steve straight to the stage. His early adult years were rootless. He worked as a labourer, carrot picker, plumber and at a builder's merchant. Each job brought new levels of boredom and after a while he flogged his motorbike to fund a hitch-hiking trip around Europe. He camped out in Montpellier, in France, for several months, then returned to London and told the guy at the job centre he wanted a job 'with meaning'.

Determined to improve his prospects, he went back to college and gained O and A-levels in sociology and politics before studying economics at North London Poly. It didn't last. After seven weeks, he quit and decided to go into acting. He was accepted into Rada and won a prize for a drama called Best Fight, based on his old school mates.

"I did everything until I was about 25 then I totally decided I wanted to be an actor. My uncle was a stuntman so I was following him, really. I started training to do my stunts to get in various disciplines to get my ticket. That gave me the hunger and I admitted to my uncle that I wanted to act. He just told me to go for it."

So he did.

Rockin' up at Rada, however, (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), was a culture shock. The establishment that was founded in 1904 and schooled Sir John Gielgud, Joan Collins, Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Glenda Jackson, Roger Moore, Peter O'Toole, John Thaw and Timothy Spall blew his mind. Weeks before enrolling, he'd been driving past Rada's Gower Street campus on the bus. Suddenly, he was inside wearing ballet tights.

"It was a culture shock for me. I remember doing ballet in classes and hearing the buses down below. I'd been on those buses before, heading to Oxford Street to sell the gear. Then suddenly I was in Rada leaning against the ballet bar wearing a pair of tights."

It wasn't just the training that gave him a shock. Steve also had to find his way among a group of socially elite, highly educated students whose backgrounds make him feel as though he were in a real life scene of The Prince and The Pauper. And, yes, he'd been cast as The Pauper.

"It was a good year. David Hare was there. And there were all these Oxford and Cambridge graduates. Everyone else was very educated in the theatre. So it was daunting and overwhelming. But acting is a great leveller. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, working class, gay or straight; it's a great leveller. If you can't do it, then you learn how, it's as simple as that.

"You know, there was no snobbery at Rada. It was all about getting on with the work. And it was tough. We weren't sitting around in yellow dungarees clapping our hands like a Play School audition. We were doing Shakespeare, which was tough. I challenge anyone to go out and do Hamlet in front of a crowd of 1,000 people. It takes nerve and guts, it really does. I'd learned to speak in public by getting involved in the market game, but Rada was something else."

It gave him a strong foundation. Within a year of graduating he'd earned a role in a TV film, The Firm, as well as a bit part in the movie Buster. Appearances in The Bill, Minder and Bergerac soon followed. And then, three years after Rada, he hit gold. The makers of EastEnders wanted him to play Phil Mitchell, alongside another newbie, Ross Kemp, who'd been booked to play his brother, Grant.

The rest, as they say, is history. Steve had finally found his job 'with meaning'. And boy did he make it count. Phil Mitchell played some of the most memorable plotlines that EastEnders has ever seen, bringing in huge ratings. From Sharongate to Who Shot Phil?, from armed robberies to alcoholism, not an episode passed without some sort of major scene.

"I tell you, I signed up in 1990 and what I expected was to be there for six months, not nearly 30 years. But I was very, very committed. I was obsessed with it. I wanted to do a good job and crack it. Luckily I met Ross, who I was working with. He was at a similar stage in his life. He was starting out and was keen and enthusiastic. We became very much close colleagues and friends. We both wanted to run lines past each other and stay late to do extra work. Then we'd get together over the weekend and work on more stuff. We put the hours in over and above what was necessary. I'm a bit of a workaholic and I'm lucky I met Ross. I haven't met many people as committed as him."

EastEnders made Steve a household name. For a while, he couldn't walk down the street without people coming up and calling him 'Phil'. And some of the attention wasn't altogether welcome. On more than one occasion, he was caught out by a chancer who wanted to show Hard Man Phil who was really the boss.

"I learned to take it in my stride. Generally, people are really nice to me. It's got past the stage where people want to fight me or anything like that because I've been around a long time. These days, if I see a 22-year-old I realise I've been on the telly all their life plus five years. It's become something a bit more than just me playing that character. People have grown up with me. We've given them an audio visual soundtrack to their lives.

"I never escape it and I tend to remember the episodes that were the big hitters because I also get reminded. They're all still being shown in shows like 20 Greatest Moments. The plot that I'm proudest of is Phil's alcoholism. That's been a long and complicated story that we've told over a long period of time to get to the point where we are now. It's not a story of the week, it's been ongoing."

While punters at Wetherspoons might not have been able to separate Phil from Steve, he's never had that problem. After work, he switches off. He forgets about his day job and gets on with the more pressing business of life.

"I don't have an issue separating myself from the character. I'll tell you a story. When I dropped my daughter at school yesterday, she asked how to fake cry. And I told her: 'You don't fake cry'.

"You believe in it during that moment. I explained to her that acting is like being in a dream. When you're in it, it's totally real. It's reality. And while I'm acting, it's real. It's like being in a little dream that we've created. As soon as I wake up, or as soon as the director says 'cut', you snap out of it. You realise it was just make believe. But while you're doing it, it's the realest thing in the world."

Playing Phil Mitchell hasn't all been fun, of course. His on-screen, off-screen relationship with Lucy Benjamin became tabloid fodder. It was ruined by phone hacking journalists who tapped into their mobiles and nicked their conversations. Their actions killed Steve's relationship. He wrongly assumed she'd been shouting her mouth off when, in fact, journalists had been stealing information from them.

Mention of the word 'tabloids' brings a world-weary sigh. "The biggest thing for me is that everyone who knows me – friends, family and people at work – they know the person that is being created in the newspapers isn't who you really are. A friend of mine who is a journalist – because they're not all evil – told me I was undergoing a process of Gazzafication. What that means is that the tabloids create a character. They create it. And anything you do that doesn't fit that character doesn't get included in their stories.

"They'll exaggerate and lie and try to make you into the character they've created. It's the trust, belief and knowledge from your friends who know you're not that person that keeps you sane."

We don't dwell. Steve's done with the tabloids. He fought that battle and has the winner's T-shirt. "My mate says – you get eyes in the front of your head for a reason. So I never look backwards. I came out the other side of it and they've been proved criminals. So thank you very much, High Court. Mine's a pint of lager and a balti in Birmigham. The best revenge is a laugh and a smile and that's the job."

Ah yes, Birmingham. You won't find Steve selling faux Chanel or dodgy Gucci out near the Bull Ring this Christmas. But you may find him in the local boozer or balti house, with his mate Matt Slack. "We'll be having a right good laugh. And I've heard John Barrowman is a bit of a naughty boy on stage when it comes to corpsing and making people laugh.

"I take the work very seriously but we know it'll be a good craic. We're there to entertain the people and we hope they have a great show. I'll be the baddie and I'll move it along."

He'll also hang out in the Second City; he always does when he's on the road. He'll be looking to immerse himself in Birmingham life and become a part-time local.

"I've got a friend with an apartment so I'll catch up with him. It's what happens when I get a job. It's the one chance I get to know another part of the world. Sometimes I make good friends who stick around and I hope to in Brum.

"The Hippodrome puts on a great panto. I've been up to it before, to watch it. I've got kids. They love panto."

There's one thing he won't bring, however. And that's his boat. Steve's a fan of all things nautical but mooring on Broad Street Canal would be a step too far.

"Yeah," he laughs. "I love boats and I've got one on the Thames. I thought about bringing it up but I haven't got time. I'll just be taking an apartment near the theatre and then enjoying the curries and the Chinese restaurants in China Town."

Good old Steve. Diamond geezer from first to last.

Oh no he isn't.

Oh yes he is.

Dick Whittington is on at the Birmingham Hippodrome from Monday December 19 to Sunday January 29, 2017. Performance times vary depending on the day. Tickets for the show cost from £15.50. Visit www.birminghamhippodrome.com or call the box office on 0844 338 5000.

Andy Richardson