I'M not sure if he's learned how to fly, or even if he'll make it to heaven, but there's every reason to suspect people will remember his name.

Who am I talking about? Dean Pitchford, the actor-turned-songwriter who won an Oscar for his lyric to Fame and is the man behind Footloose, the 80s dance film turned Broadway hit, which opens at The MayflowerTheatre on Monday as part of its UK tour.

Twenty years on from the film, and six years since the show was a hit on Broadway, Dean reckons Footloose has a timeless appeal.

"We tried with the picture to create a world that was not beholden to any time or place," explains Dean, who has helped give the show an overhaul for its UK tour.

"If you look at the original motion picture, it takes place in a fictional town, with no reference to a particular time or state of the union.

"If you go to the south-western United States today you'll see people in blue jeans and cowboy boots driving pick-up trucks and wearing ten-gallon hats. That part of American culture hasn't changed in 60 years."

In the classic teen rebellion film, Kevin Bacon plays a city boy who moves from Chicago to a small town in the west, where dancing has been outlawed.

As timeless as the film's imagery is its soundtrack, featuring such spirited numbers as Let's Hear It For the Boy, Almost Paradise, the title track itself and Holding Out for a Hero (currently to be heard on the soundtrack of Shrek 2).

Dean, who has written songs for Hollywood divas such as Cher and Barbra Streisand, says the film - the first he'd ever written - ended up becoming a political fable.

"I wrote it without any idea of making a political statement, but when the move came out in '84 there was a big upswing in the US on the part of the moral majority.

"There was a lot of banning of books in libraries and burning of books and records. The movie came out and it was accused of being against the moral majority.

"We are now once again in the grip of the moral majority in the US, with Christian rights setting the political agenda. One of the Dixie Chicks made a comment that she was embarrassed she was from the same state as George Bush and people started smashing up their CDs and banning them from radio stations.

"The outpouring of emotion you get in Footloose when this boy brings music and dancing into this town is very comparable."

Bizarrely enough, the film's theme of repressed emotions was mirrored in real life when some cinemas in Utah - the state where some of the film had been shot - crudely edited some of its supposedly inflammatory scenes.

"In some of the movie houses there, the projectionist would hold a piece of card in front of the projector to black out the objectionable passages of the film. The screen would go black but you could still hear the soundtrack.

"We heard about this while we were filming in Utah and when we got back to Hollywood we found they were doing it to our film!"

Dean started out as an actor on Broadway before being bitten by the songwriting bug. The first song he had in a movie was Fame, which scooped an Oscar and turned him into one of the most sought-after lyricists in Hollywood.

Despite regularly working with some of the most infamous divas in show business, Dean's only bad experience was with Irene Cara, the star of Fame and singer of its title song.

"She was terribly behaved in the studio when she was recording Fame and threw a tantrum, because she didn't want to sing it our way. When she heard the vocal put together the next day she broke down in tears. She had to come back and do it again - our way."

Footloose is at The Mayflower Theatre, Southampton from Monday until Saturday, August 7. Box office: 023 8071 1811.