Dirty Den going into battle on stage to re-create TV magic of Dad's Army

A jewel in the crown of the Beeb’s back catalogue, this gently humorous picture of life in the wartime Home Guard of Walmington-on-Sea was a major hit from 1968 to 1977, making enduring stars of its mainly elderly cast.

And there lies the problem, for most of the original company – Arthur Lowe, John le Mesurier, John Laurie, James Beck and Arnold Ridley – are long gone and even Ian Lavender who played the teenage Private Pike is now in his sixties.

Some ideas are simply too appealing to producers, though, and so the boys of the Home Guard are back on patrol once more with some new faces filling familiar old roles.

The biggest name in the new line-up has to be Leslie Grantham, forever to be associated with his long-running role as EastEnders love rat, bad guy and all-round anti-hero Dirty Den Watts, but now taking on a much more genial role as he steps into the shoes of the late James Beck to play shady spiv Private Walker.

This isn’t the first time that Leslie has been involved in recreating a bit of showbiz magic – a few years ago he starred in a short-lived West End version of Humphrey Bogart classic Casablanca.

He is fully aware, therefore, of the dangers of trying to recreate a piece of much-loved entertainment history without any of the original stars being on hand.

“We’re finding out all the pitfalls as we go along,” he says during a break in rehearsal, adding that it was perhaps inevitable that he’d be offered the role of black marketeer Walker rather than one of the more innocent members of the doddery line-up.

“Well, I’d have been upset if they’d offered me Godfrey!” he laughs, referring to the show’s oldest character.

“And I knew I couldn’t be Pike. But Walker is natural casting.”

“We do have to theatricalise it,” Leslie admits. “But we are doing the television scripts and what’s interesting is that it really does come off.

“The beauty of it is that it works so well, it’s so well written and it just flies off the page.

“But you look at the stuff Jimmy Perry and David Croft wrote that has stood the test of time and the two that really stand the test of time are Dad’s Army and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.”

The words stand the test of time but still Leslie concedes that Dad’s Army without Lowe and Le Mesurier is a risk that could, as he puts it, see the cast on a hiding to nothing particularly when, as seems to be the case, the show is going to sell primarily to people who remember the original.

“We’re going to do our damnedest not to disappoint anyone,” he insists. “But until we open and get the first night out of the way, it’s hard to tell what might happen.

“All we can do is be as truthful as we can without making it into caricature.

“What we have is the serious job of making the material our own and there’s always going to be someone saying he looks like Captain Mainwaring but he doesn’t sound like him or whatever but all we can do is find the happy medium.”