Keyboard legend and professional curmudgeon, Rick Wakeman tells Andrew Cowen why he's grumpy but not angry.

For someone who prides himself on his grumpiness, he's a funny bloke that Rick Wakeman.

Mind you, if I'd made my name by wearing a cape, standing in front of a mountain of keyboards while small people tried to act out the story of King Arthur in front of me, on ice, I'd find it hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

The fact remains that Rick, keyboard wizard and raconteur, is one of our most entertaining entertainers, regardless of whether or not you're a fan of progressive rock's worst excesses.

Rick's best-known these days as a mainstay of the TV show Grumpy Old Men, an inspired meeting of curmudgeons railing against the excesses of modern life.

Rick's sardonic wit, eye for absurdity and natural gift as a story-teller made him a natural for the show. The show was a hit because it spoke to generations of blokes fed up of being pushed around by rules that made no sense.

The logical extension to the show was to take it out on the road, a tour of theatres with Rick, a mic, and a jug of water.

However, here's a man who never takes the easy option and loves a good spectacle so when the Grumpy Old Picture Show hits Coventry, it'll be one of the most technologically advanced pieces of theatre ever.

Rick's grumpiness is not an intimidating thing like, say, Naomi Campbell's or Nick Cave's.

When I ask him, at 10am on a Monday morning, whether he's grumpy, Rick replies: "I'm always grumpy".

Yet he says it with such a chuckle that you can't help but warm to him.

"It's such a great word, 'grumpy' isn't it? "It's not the same as angry, it's a sort of fatalism. There's sod all we can do about it."

There's a phrase used in Rotherham which hasn't really travelled far from the town that describes a grumpy person as "having the monk on."

I'd love it to pass into common usage and thought Rick might be the one to help me do it.

"I've heard that expression," he tells me. "It's fantastic, isn't it? I'm the president of the Classic Rock Society which is based there so I spend a bit of time in Rotherham.

"It's a grumpy place."

In a nutshell, the Grumpy Old Picture Show sees Rick and his keyboards interacting with projections, recounting highlights of his life. It's scripted and synced to a computer so there's no room for mistakes.

The technology alone took a year to develop and was written especially for the musician by the geeks at Shepperton Studio.

Rick explains: "I have spent the past few years doing one-man shows and I was tired of it. I thought 'I can't take this any further.'

"I was thinking about making more use of the Grumpy Old Men idea as it had seen me getting work on Countdown and in corporate speaking, but I was stuck.

"I didn't want to just walk on stage and moan for 90 minutes. I'd been up to London for a meeting and on the long train ride back to Norfolk I started to think.

"I always take a pen and notepad and I wrote down 'grumpy show'. Then I got a call from a guy in Holland who was asking me for pictures for an article he was writing, so I wrote down 'pictures.'

"Maybe if I had loads of pictures I thought as I began circling those three words. By the time I got off the train I'd got this idea about a grumpy show with loads of pictures.

"I've got a box file at home which I chuck all my ideas into. They stay there for a couple of weeks and 90 per cent of them turn out to be crap."

There was something about this idea that appealed to Rick and he took his ideas to a producer.

"The meeting was really funny," he tells me. "I gave them my pitch and all they could say was: 'You're absolutely barmy.'

"I was told that I'd need absolute darkness, two separate systems, either a hung or a back projector, at least four computer systems to mix it properly and that's if the software existed.

"Plus it would cost an absolute fortune."

However, the producer did agree with Rick that it was "a bloody good idea" and he was told to come back in a week.

The team at Shepperton were set to work writing the software and ironing out the technical glitches and, after six months, it was ready.

Rick played 14 dates with the show and it went down a storm. Suddenly, his desire to wind down his solo shows and take a break was infeasible.

"The reviews were sensational, the best of my career and by the end of the year a couple of dozen places were asking for the show.

"I thought that it would be a shame to waste the show as so much had gone into it, so, after the first run ended, I made a few tweaks and changes, which took four weeks, and it's all go again."

It's a simple idea. Rick's onstage with his keyboards and he interacts with other musicians on screen, and himself.

"The closest comparison is to a play," he explains. "There's no freedom to deviate. It's all set in stone. It's a real discipline to me but the satisfaction is enormous."

"The whole thing was rehearsed at Shepperton Studios on this big stage, which was weird. It was set up like the live show and I had to run it from top to bottom, regardless of whether I got it right or wrong. I'd do this four times, with all the back-up systems in place in case anything went wrong.

"I felt like a pilot in training."

Rick draws heavily on his grumpy nature in the show and his kids are there as part of the projections. There are sketches and songs. When I asked what it closest resembled, Rick was in no doubt:

"It's a cross between Dick Emery and Little Britain."

He also points out that it's a family show with nothing too scurrilous but it's also been designed for the hardcore fan.

"There's plenty there to appeal to the serious Yes fan, enough to make most people happy. It's difficult to fit everything into a two and a half hour show."

Rick expects to see Yes bassist Chris Squire at the London leg. It was Squire who was Wakeman's drinking buddy in the band, providing a healthy reality check while singer Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe went off on fanciful flights of mythology.

There's a story that does the rounds among Yes fans about the time that Rick had a curry delivered on stage during a performance of their most controversial album.

"That's true, I'm afraid," admits Rick.

He makes no secret of his dislike of Tales From Topographic Oceans, Yes's four-sided folly from 1974.

"I always said it was too long. The ideas are spread too thin but we had to fill four sides of vinyl which meant an awful lot of padding. Playing it was a real bore and there were times when I had nothing to do for ages.

"One night, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, I was really hungry so I got one of the roadies to fetch me a curry which I ate off the top of my keyboards.

"As you can imagine, the smell got everywhere and the band soon started looking at me.

"Mind you, Jon did come over and have a few poppadoms."

* Rick Wakeman's Grumpy Old Picture Show comes to Coventry College Theatre on Saturday April 26. Tickets: 0870 240 9049