The man that everyone loves to hate - Jeremy Beadle - is currently in pantomime in Bournemouth...

IT LOOKED like one of his famous pranks: Jeremy Beadle is nowhere to be seen almost an hour after the press have gathered in Bournemouth to meet him.

The star of this year's pantomime, Aladdin, eventually appears to rapturous applause.

Whipping into his Wishee Washee costume, he nonchalantly tells me he had landed at Heathrow airport a couple of hours earlier after spending the evening at a charity gala in Monte Carlo with Kevin Costner, Jimmy Tarbuck and Prince Albert.

"I was there doing the laughs. I don't tell jokes. I'm not a gag man. I get the audience going."

Coming back to lashing rain and nose-to-tail traffic on the M3, he is remarkably unflustered.

Tucking into Twiglets, crisps and sandwiches, the TV star everyone loves to hate bemoans the fact that people presume he will be playing the baddie. In fact, audiences will have to save the hissing and booing for the charming Gareth Hunt, who plays Abanazar.

Jeremy explains: "I'm a mischief-maker. I don't sing, dance or tell jokes. I'm not an actor, as I can't handle routine.

"I do very little, actually. I make the audience do it all, but I can make people laugh. I'm quite good at improvisation.

"I will seize a moment and turn it into comedy. It's high risk pulling people out of the crowd, because you never know what will happen, but I make it work because that's my skill."

Despite his phenomenal success with "people" TV shows Game for a Laugh, People Do the Funniest Things, Beadle's Hot Shots, Beadle's Box of Tricks, It's Beadle, Beadle's About and You've Been Framed, Jeremy doesn't see himself as a star presenter.

"I am a writer and producer," he tells me candidly.

For many years he worked with American author Irving Wallace on seven million-selling reference books, including The People's Almanac and The Book of Lists.

In the early days, he wrote for Kenny Everett, Terry Wogan, Noel Edmonds and Bernard Manning.

"I wrote Gotcha! for the BBC and they turned it down, saying they would never transmit anything so vulgar."

It became Beadle's About and ran for 11 years on ITV.

"It probably was vulgar, but it was also popular and it was also a very sophisticated programme too.

"The hardest shows to write are family shows where kids and grandparents can laugh at gags with the same comprehension."

Jeremy presented You've Been Framed for nine years, but Lisa Riley took over two years ago, so Jeremy could concentrate on other things - essentially writing and producing.

As for being someone we love to hate, Jeremy is a thick-skinned businessman:

"I'm a very ordinary person doing an extraordinary job. I don't care what people say and write about me.

"Reviews tell me more about the reviewer than the show. I'm far too positive to worry about that, because it's the easiest thing in the world to be negative.

"I accept the abuse as part of the trade. What I find offensive is the lies. People meet me and say, 'You're much nicer than I expected'. I met Tony Blair and two weeks later I met Cherie and she said Tony came home and said how nice I was and much different to what he had thought.

"The only thing that's important to me is what my friends think of me. After all, if millions of pounds have been spent on branding you a certain way, you are never going to escape it!"

Aladdin is at the Pavilion Theatre, Bournemouth until January 7. Tickets are available from the BIC box office.

For more information, call 01202 456456.