IT WAS 70 degrees in the shade and Nick Freedman was just drinking in his first taste of winter in East Lancashire.

Sitting under a sunshade with the waves lapping gently in the background, he could still have been in Summer Bay.

However, Nick was actually sitting in Pendle Wavelengths, having just been asked to pose with a pink rubber lifebelt and a large inflatable banana.

Still, like the true pro that he is, Nick put up with the demands of the local press and the local autograph hunters with an easy, if slightly bemused smile.

He even managed not to lose his cool when I committed the cardinal sin of asking him why he had left Neighbours. Whoops, wrong Aussie soap!

"I was never in Neighbours, I was in Home and Away," he laughed.

Nick, who was born and bred in Sydney, played Alex Bennett in the soap before moving to Paris for the sake of his art. In fact, Nick could not wait to leave the soap, despite being offered a three-year contract.

And his scathing attacks on fellow cast members, branding some of them "prima donnas", add to the impression of the reluctant soap star.

"They expected everyone around to be a 'true believer'.

"I had to work with some people who were particularly like that," he says, without naming names.

"I can understand it because they are young and they are forced into a position where they have to cope with a huge workload.

"The kids fall into line because they want to be famous. That did not appeal to me and I looked like some kind of rabble rouser whereas I was just trying to be myself."

Nick has now shed the long locks he sported in Home and Away and, in his studious-looking glasses, he is barely recognisable as the teen heart-throb.

Certainly, Nick has no ambitions to return to Summer Bay and, indeed, he says he is trying to be less ambitious all the time. His main interest outside acting is playing guitar with his grunge rock band Lurch and Nick, who was Australian Classical Guitar Champion in 1981, plans to hit the road with the band after the panto run.

So doesn't he worry that playing Prince Alexei in Snow White And the Seven Dwarfs might harm his credibility?

"It's a great privilege to entertain kids," he replies. "So far I've really enjoyed it.

"It's good to ground myself in England because it's a big place, a big market.

"Acting is always going to be a precarious profession and so anywhere where you can get known in a place with a greater population is good.

"And the money is good and, you know, it's fun!"

As for celebrity status and having lots of young female admirers, Nick admits that it's all rather embarrassing.

It was a large part of the reason why he got his hair cut.

"It does not come naturally to me," he admits.

"I want to avoid living under any kind of illusion and fame is an illusion.

"It was weird that this thing (Home and Away) happened to me.

"I had not seen myself as an actor and I was never even a soap watcher. "For me it was a creative opportunity. It's not great literature or anything like that but you get to go in there and have a job that's well paid and do something different every day."

Nick Freedman appears in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at Colne Municipal Hall until January 15.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.