IT MUST take a lot for someone to swap a home in the Spanish sun of Torremolinos for the hardship of a British winter. For Brendan Sheerin, it was a chance to appear in his first pantomime.

Sheerin is the cheerful Yorkshire-born tour guide and presenter on Channel Four’s reality game show, Coach Trip, on which various couples get to travel around Europe in a coach and vote off other contestants on the way.

He hands out yellow warning cards and ultimately red ones which see dejected couples sent packing and back home.

Now he is starring as The Sultan, alongside Michelle Heaton from Liberty X and 7ft 8ins Neil Fingleton (“Britain’s tallest man”) in Aladdin at the Southport Theatre.

And, yes, he confirms, he will be handing out cards in his new role. “Not too many, otherwise it would take over the show.”

Sheerin had worked as a tour guide for many years before being given the Coach Trip job. In fact, at the time he was working in English tourism for Scarborough Borough Council.

“It was my boss who told me they were looking for ex-tour guides,” he says. There were various London meetings until, travelling back to Yorkshire, he was told they had got the person they wanted. “I told them I was pleased and they said, ‘No, darling, it’s you’.”

The first two series went well enough, but the show was dropped and Sheerin went back to Spain to work in a restaurant. Then Channel Four got a new commissioner and the show was brought back.

“It was taken off the shelf and the third series was well received, but it took off from four. Now it’s a cult programme.”