Listen: Bittersweet taste of success for Last of the Summer Wine creator Roy Clarke

Meet Roy Clarke, failed writer.

Sure, he created Last of the Summer Wine; Arkwright in Open All Hours; Hyacinth Bucket sprang from his pen and on to the screen in Keeping Up Appearances.

But Roy Clarke, as far as he is concerned, is a failed writer.

"It's like the actor who's a comedian and wants to do Shakespeare, I've always wanted to do a serious novel. I've always had that ambition. It's what's kept me from thinking I'm the bees knees. There's a long way to go yet," says Clarke.

"Honestly. It's like there's two people: there's the me that other people see and the me that I know – and he's nothing to shout about," insists Clarke.

Of all the things we discuss, this is the thing that bothers Clarke most.

It is almost the first thing he says when he sits down, revealing the interview is a rare occurrence.

"It's not that I haven't been offered. I don't do these things, they embarrass me. I know what people are like round here, Northern people, you know. I wouldn't want them opening the paper and thinking 'oh him again'," he says.

He ends the interview in the same way. The modesty he has displayed throughout has been a surprise, I tell him. It's not that you expect him to line up awards on his desk or leave DVDs of the many, many shows he's written littered absent-mindedly around the room, but Clarke is entitled to some degree of satisfaction at his work and career.

"People think it's an act," he says of his apparent reticence to talk about his undeniable success. "But I know how many things I've got to be modest about, let's put it like that."

Out in the Doncaster countryside, Clarke has lived in the same village for over four decades, although three years ago he moved to the

sprawling home where we meet. We talk in an annex of the main house, a large red brick-walled room which is equipped with everything a writer needs: a comfy leather sofa, a huge computer screen, beautiful paintings and an impressive- looking sound system underneath which are littered CDs, the most prominent of which are jazz flavoured.

There are also a couple of religious iconographic paintings on the

walls, relics from a Catholic upbringing.

It is from this room that Clarke has written episodes of Last of the Summer Wine in recent years. It is also in this house that he wrote, he reveals, the final episode of the show, which began its run in 1973.

"It's finishing. It was bound to happen eventually. Everybody's knocking on, including the writer," he says.

Last of the Summer Wine is older than I am and it is not only an institution, it is a typically Yorkshire institution and it feels like its been around forever. For many viewers, it has.

"How do you think I feel," says Clarke. "It's like your wife's left you."

He goes on to say that it will be a big gap: "I have no quarrel with the BBC about it ending. Let's face it, they've supported me for nearly 40 years, so I can't complain – it's been on the cards for a while."

Last of the Summer Wine, which Clarke describes as a "love letter to the past", was a show that almost didn't happen.

A former teacher, policeman, taxi driver and door-to-door salesman, Clarke's first writing came as a boy.

"I was in short pants, back when kids used to wear short pants, and the first thing I wrote was called Murder on the Bus, it was a page and a half," he says.

"When I was a boy I used to start a new novel every Tuesday and never make it to the weekend. I suppose I was learning my craft."

He continued to develop his talents and managed to get a couple of commissions for radio drama, "back when Radio Leeds had its own drama department and studio".

Duncan Wood, appointed head of TV comedy for the BBC in the early Seventies, approached Clarke. "He said they wanted something for three old men – I think it came from some primitive market research. I was 40-years-old then and I didn't want to write about three old men, I thought it was the world's worst idea," says Clarke.

He may have hated the short brief, but he desperately wanted to try to write for the 30-minute sitcom slot. Then, a eureka moment came.

"I was on the point of turning it down until that magic moment occurred," he says. "I thought if they are all free from any ties and footloose, they're the same as kids and as soon as I saw them as kids, it worked. It's Just William in long trousers."

Clegg, Compo and Blamire were born, but Clarke still had no idea if it was going to work as a show. "In fact, I never thought it would work. The idea it has lasted so long, well, that's ridiculous," he says.

Ridiculous, maybe, but the adventures that sprang from those three overgrown boys have captured several generations of viewers.

Incredibly, Clarke has written every single episode alone, eschewing the now favoured method of working in a team of writers. He also worked solo when he created his other two major series, Open All Hours, starring Ronnie Barker and David Jason and Keeping Up Appearances, with Patricia Routledge as the pompous Hyacinth Bucket.

The second of these is coming to the stage, its world premiere taking place this week at the Alhambra Theatre the Bradford.

"Somebody thought they could make a bob or two," says Clarke, who, despite his modesty and soft nature, has an undeniable streak of the typical Tyke about him – this is a man descended from farmers on his father's side and miners on his mother's.

"The company came to me with the idea. Often when these things transfer to the stage, they are an amalgam of old episodes, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to write some fresh stuff, and you often wonder if your characters can have a life beyond the TV, so it seemed an

opportunity to find out.

"I think they've done a really good job. It's an excellent cast and the lady they've got to play Hyacinth, she doesn't look like her, but she sounds just like her. Whatever happens to it, at least it'll be fresh."

With Last of the Summer Wine consigned to sitcom history, Clarke doesn't appear ready to take it easy. He says he has never been on holiday: "I'd go about two days and I'd have to get the notebook and computer out" and even though he is now "essentially retired", there is one last achievement to tick off. "I'm ploughing on with the novel, the one I've been playing with for 30 years," he says.

"Looking back, all I think is 'where did it go?'.

"I'm not looking back all satisfied, I still come back to the fact that I haven't got this novel finished. I've got about 1,000 pages, now it's almost an exercise in organising it."

What's it about? "It's about a thousand pages."

Still not willing to blow his own trumpet. Maybe when he finishes the novel Clarke will finally consider himself a success as a writer.

n Keeping Up Appearances is at The Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, to Saturday. Tickets 01274 432000.