Ricky Tomlinson is not your typical celebrity. He's been a plasterer, banjo player, comic, union agitator, political activist, award-winning actor, best selling writer, unwilling guest of Her Majesty's prisons – even an M15 target.

Now best known as couch potato Jim Royle in award-winning sitcom The Royle Family, to other generations, he was blustering Bobby Grant in Scouse soap Brookside, DCI Charlie Wise in forensic psychology drama, Cracker, or Mike Bassett, England Manager.

Even before he was famous, he was infamous – as one half of the notorious Shrewsbury Two, he was jailed for two years after a flying picket protest.

But today, he's the picture of tranquil domesticity as he potters around the Merseyside home he shares with wife and manager Rita: "I have a little room with a little telly and all my papers are scattered everywhere. It's like a prison within the confines of the house. I love it."

Last year, he underwent a quadruple bypass at Liverpool's Cardiothoracic Centre. But he insists: "I'm on top of the world. Everything's working, everything's great.

"I had to lose weight and that was fair enough so I lost a couple of stone and since the operation, I've lost another stone. People walk past me and they can't see me!"

He went straight back to work. He says: "The surgeon who done me was Doctor Oo. He was a Burmese man, wonderful, and that was his name, Dr Oo.

"So as a little thank-you, I organised a show at the Liverpool Empire and it was called the Bypass Show because practically everyone on the bill had had bypass surgery.

"For the finale, we sang You'll Never Walk Alone with Gerry Marsden, there was actually 66 bypasses on the stage. It must be a world record."

He never stops. In half an hour, he lists books he's written, documentaries he's planning, a house he's doing up, projects in the pipeline. When I suggest he's a workaholic, he laughs: "I love work, you see, I'm from a family of alcoholics ... hahaha, workaholics, not alcoholics, Freudian slip!

"People think I drink heavily and I don't. I can go, like, six months without a drink. But my brother's just retired, he's 70, I'm 68, my other two brothers are still working and me mam worked until she was into her 70s."

He became an actor in his 40s when director Roland Joffe cast him in the lead role in controversial drama, United Kingdom.

He says disbelievingly: "He said to me, 'Look, if I give you a part in this and I ask you to say a couple of lines, will you be able to do it?' and I went, 'Oh yeah, I won't let you down.'

"It turned out I was the lead! And Colin Welland was in it. Bill Patterson, Rosemary Martin, Anthony Benson ... and I'm the bloody lead!"

Brookside made him a household name although he thinks the soap dragged on too long. He says: "If that had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it.

"When I was in it with Sue Johnson and Paul Usher and Simon O Brien, it was a minority programme but we were getting eight million viewers.

"This sounds big-headed – but I think the Grant family at that time were the strongest family on television. I don't care, yeah, you can have all your soaps but the Grant family were best by far!

"But who was writing for the show then? We had Jimmy McGovern, Frankie Clark, Chris Bernard, Kay Mellor, John Godber, Andy Lynch...the list just goes on. How could you fail with writers like that?

Another family – The Royles – made his name in comedy and Ricky is delighted that writer Caroline Aherne seems to have made a full recovery after a highly publicised breakdown.

He says: "I love Caroline Aherne and apparently she's just written, just completed, a movie which is soon to be going into production. I don't know what it's about but you can guarantee it will be excellent.

"It was a laugh a day every day, that show. We used to get sent out of the room for laughing like naughty boys, go and stand in the corner until you can control yourself. It was great."

It's a far cry from his early years as a plasterer and union activist, days (he discovered recently that MI5 had him under surveillance in the 1970s) that still deeply affect him, resulting in his notorious on-screen outburst at Thatcher – that he would "have a drink the day she dies."

He says now: "I still mean them. She decimated the mining communities and I will never forgive her for it and I hope she's listening."

Now he's on a mission to revive variety, as he hits the road with his comic extravaganza, Ricky Tomlinson's Laughter Show, arriving in Blackpool next week.

He's enlisted movie, Coronation Street and Emmerdale star Tony Barton, comedienne Pauline Daniels and comic Duncan Norvelle, who Ricky managed to talk out of retirement.

He says: "I bumped into him at, funnily enough, Ken Dodd's celebration for being 55 years in showbusiness. I was hosting the evening and we had an amazing array of personalities who came along to support Doddy."

It's a mission near his heart. He grins: "It's a good old-fashioned variety show really. I've got nothing against alternative comics at all but they are one-man shows and I suppose they're okay.

"But I was raised on variety, going to the Liverpool Empire Theatre in Liverpool and stuff like that and they'd have six or seven acts on the bill. I love it – probably because I'm a little bit of a show-off!"

* Ricky Tomlinson's Laughter Show is at Blackpool Opera House from July 23 for four weekly Wednesday shows. Box office: 0844 856 1111.