McArdle who got his big acting break as Billy Corkhill in Brookside, has been a Reds fan since he was a boy.

“I’m not a Koppite but I am a fan,” he says, bemoaning his lack of season ticket.

He hopes, however, that non-fans will also get something out of the show.

“It’ll educate them,” he says knowingly.

“It helps if you know a bit about football and about Liverpool but it’s an entertaining enough piece that even if you didn’t you’d still get something from it. There’s enough going on for everybody.

“The sub-plot is money that we find and we get involved with the police. So it’s not just a celebration of football.”

Liverpool comedian John Bishop plays the second father, Tom, in his first main stage role despite a couple of TV cameos including the twins bodybuilding dad in the recent series of Skins.

“He surprised me. For someone who’s never done a play he’s really good,” reveals McArdle, who lives in Clitheroe.

“He’s taken to it like a duck to water ’cause he’s a really funny man anyway, John.

“All he’s done is adapted his stand- up.

“And he’s also really good to work with in a team. It must be hard for a stand-up to share the stage with someone because they’re on their own and they get all the laughs.

“But any ideas he has he’ll give you them so he’s quite a generous actor, which is quite hard to find.”

This is McArdle’s second appearance at the Empire Theatre – last time it was in the very different role of the narrator in the Rocky Horror Show (the Richard O’Brien part).

More recently, he was in Our Country’s Good at the Playhouse in 2007.