Full Monty star Mark returns to Sheffield for Crucible play

Mark, who played Dave in the 1997 film about a group of Sheffield ex-steelworkers who become male strippers, takes on the role of Bobby Spokes.He is the dad of rising snooker star Dylan, who is played by Jack O’Connell of Skins fame, in new comedy The Nap, set at the theatre during the World Snooker Championships.The Game of Thrones and Atlantis star said that his character is an “ex-junkie drug dealer who’s done time in prison.“He built a snooker centre in the back garden with a full-sized table for the lad and coaches him a bit. “They are a rough family and Dylan’s parents have split up but they are still in contact, so it’s a very dysfunctional background that he comes from.”Mark said that Bobby is still probably the most reliable person in Dylan’s life, “but by no means an angel”. He said that Richard Bean’s script makes Bobby a funny character whose drug use has affected his memory. Mark added: “There’s a lot of really nicely observed stuff to go at”, with some inevitably spicy language.“Richard’s so good at writing believable dialogue, sometimes it’s just the choice of a word which is then hilarious.”He said of the famous scene in The Full Monty where the lads perform their strip routine: “It was terrifying! I remember them saying, ‘It’s alright, we’ve got a closed set. There’s nobody there that doesn’t have to be on it’. “When we asked who that meant, they said, ‘You lot, the whole cast, a second film unit and 400 extras’. That’s a closed set! It wasn’t reassuring.”Mark said that people used to stop him to talk about The Full Monty. But now it’s Game of Thrones. “Neither one I would have said would find such a huge audience. Fantasy is such a tricky genre but they’ve done such a good job on it.”He can hardly believe that The Full Monty was filmed 20 years ago. “It’s the first time I’ve really been back to Sheffield. The city does have a different feel to it.“There’s a much ,more positive feel to the place. It feels like it’s turned a corner and is very impressive.”His stint on Atlantis is finished but Mark won’t be disappearing off our TV screens. He’s been filming new episodes of the ITV drama Jericho, set in a Victorian shanty town that springs up around a Yorkshire railway viaduct building site. He will also be appearing later this year in new BBC crime drama New Blood.The Nap is at the Crucible until April 2. Box office: at the theatre, call 0114 249 6000 or online at www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk