INTERVIEW/Jason McAteer: Tom Humphries finds the Sunderland scallywag still witty but wiser now he's an old hand.

His name is Jason McAteer. You may remember him from such roles as The Fresh-Faced Prospect; The Third Amigo; Take That! Spice Boys Are Go; The Fugitive; Reviewing Roy Keane. Or you may just know him by way of his longest running role - Trigger. He was the comedy sidekick to a footballing generation.

Well he's back. This time playing the role of club captain to a venerable old north east club which has fallen on hard times. He's a loveable old codger now and believable too.

There's a light, mischievous touch at work on the script this time. McAteer now lives in a townhouse four doors down from his old hell-raising buddy Phil Babb. In one charming early scene we see McAteer and Babb meet up for their weekly night out. A curry and a chat. Back home early.

They live in the student town of Durham and they move through the fair like a couple of aging rat packers lost in a Microsoft plant. Nobody knows who they are or why they are there. Nobody is much interested.

"All those posh students," says McAteer ruefully. "We're too common. They're rugby and boat-race types. All this roasting going on. We don't get touched. We're talking about taking up bingo, we are."

Ah, matinee idols in the evenings of their careers. The present plot is full of such nice twists and knowing nods to personal histories. The manager of the club, which recently went on a record-equalling run of defeats is another old confederate, Mick McCarthy, fresh from his starring role in the long running sitcom My Arse and Burton's Window.

You see McCarthy's name in the credits and you know it's a last stand sort of deal. Backs to the wall. For the occasion, McCarthy has gathered many of the old gang around him to save the club.

Babb and McCarthy for instance have had their goodie/baddie moments in the previous productions, but now, in another inversion of character type, Babb takes the squad for warm-up sessions and has become a sort of deputy sheriff figure.

When we join the action every one is on edge. They know what's over the brow of the next hill. They can hear the drums. They know what the morning will bring.

The morning will bring Millwall in an FA Cup semi-final. It will bring the renewal of McAteer's ancient feud with Dennis Wise. There's another twist of bitter irony. Wise is right now squiring McCarthy's ugly old flame, Millwall.

And then the final. Nobody dares say this, but it underpins every piece of dialogue. An FA Cup final? Manchester United? Roy Keane? The image hangs over this week like a zeppelin full of battery acid.

It's what keeps you watching. Keane. The scourge of Saipan. Keane who has denounced the FA Cup itself as nothing more than "bollocks", but who himself now has little else left to play for this season. Keane, he who liketh the smell of napalm in the morning. And after lunch. And before bed.

Keane and McAteer and McCarthy and Gary Breen and Babbsy all together on a battlefield again in a final denouement? Saipan, The Sequel - This Time It's Still Personal.

Would the director have the nerve to pull it off without tipping the whole production over into farce? "Let's try," says McAteer.

History is prequel. Last time he appeared in an FA Cup final (against Manchester United) he did so as a swan. The Spice Boys of Liverpool were in their pomp and they graced the sward in their fine white suits and shades like Miami Vice wannabes. Setting themselves up. Now in a more mellow, more productive time he finds he has few regrets, but that day, that season is one of them. He sees the white suits as an emblem of another country. Some place he once played.

"I do wish we'd won that FA Cup with Liverpool. It plays on the mind a bit. I haven't won a lot in football. Roy Keane gets mentioned a lot in that context, all he's won. I have great respect for Roy, but I'm different.

"Generally I think that you can't take the medals out for a pint. The memories are what count. I've been dealt a great hand. Memories and friends. But I do wish we'd won something at Liverpool. As a comeback to the Spice Boys thing. Just to be able to say, 'yeah, but we won'."

Such soliloquies are the serious side to McAteer. He gives that aspect of his personality more frequent airings these days, but comedy is still his first love. The business of the white suits sets his mind off like a runaway train.

At Sunderland when he arrived first the players were regularly issued with suits. Then this year with times hard, they were told to buy them for themselves. Now he's wrapping the whole thing up.

"You get bitten by your mistakes. You learn. If we get to the final, we won't be in white suits. We'll go in red pants , long brown macs and trilby hats. Like the great Bob Stokoe. The cup needs us for the comedy value. We'll come out like 11 Inspector Clouseaus. Pink Panther music. Everyone will root for us."

He'd do it too. He was no more a Spice Boy by temperament than he is a bumbling French detective. More than most players, McAteer has always been aware of the role he was playing at any given time. At heart he's still a Birkenhead boy gazing across the river at the big city. Sussing it out. Telling stores about it.

This skinny time away from the electric air of the Premiership has suited him. He likes the outsider roles. That's what he loved about Ireland. Still does.

"I loved the fact that when we played for Ireland we didn't have our own training ground. I loved it at the World Cup when the training kit didn't turn up on time. I love that bit of a shambles that makes you work harder. At Sunderland this year we've moved to this posh training ground.

"The old Charlie Hurley training ground was windswept and freezing, but it was good for us. You get lost in the glamour world of football. I've seen it. I've been there. Lost in it. It's not the best place to be.

"This year at Sunderland there's 18 players gone. We've been left here with the kids. Feet on the ground. There's no glamour anymore. We're working. I'm glad to be playing. I feel passionate about it again. I love it."

The kids. Most of them have never played regular first-team football in the Premiership. McAteer finds that they're enthused by the thought of Walsall away on a wet Wednesday. If it's not a problem to them, it's not a problem to him.

"We deserve it. We've battled so hard. We deserve a little bit of fortune. We've had to take two steps back to level out."

The last line could be a metaphor for McAteer himself. A career which started late lurched into forward gear very rapidly in 1994 when he went from being a prospect at Bolton to eating chicken nuggets with Larry Mullen on the bonnet of a limo in Times Square during the World Cup that summer.

Since then, everything has been aspiration and perspiration. The next thing. Right now he is in the moment as surely as a 12-step programme recovery man might be.

"All your career you wish you were playing here or there. The job this year is getting out of this division. Getting to the cup final. I just get on with what's happening now. The challenge next year will be rebuilding Sunderland, but on Monday we'll be getting ready for a game against Wimbledon."

The relentless emphasis on the present tense is encouraging, but a little worrying. Dramatic needs are such that we need to use a little of the past as back plot before we fast-forward into a theoretical future.

It won't work if McAteer sticks to the one-day-at-a-time hymn. Fortunately, he's fearless and like most bright football people he has always been fascinated by Keane. Talking about him is good. Playing against him would be better.

He needs reminding at this point that the last time he played against Keane things were a little incendiary. Gavin McCann, his Sunderland colleague, had just bought McAteer a copy of Keane's autobiography. Adding fuel to the mischief McAteer took the book to the game hoping to get an apprentice to knock on the Manchester United dressing-room door to get the book signed. To Jason.

"It had been a topic of conversation all week. I thought he'd said a bit too much in the book or Eamon Dunphy had said a bit too much on his behalf. We had a bit of a tangle. The game was dead. I needed to spark something off to get us going.

"Sometimes it's a pass. Sometimes it's a challenge. Unfortunately for me it was a challenge with Roy. I lashed out at him. He lashed out at me. I should have been booked. Then he just sort of mouthed off at me. I said 'put it in your next fucking book. You've put everything else in this one!' Unfortunately for Roy he doesn't let things drop. He says that himself in the book!"

Keane ran past McAteer a little while later, after McAteer had set up a Sunderland equaliser and delivered on to McAteer a clip around the ear, which spoke volumes about their relationship, but did little to impress the referee. McAteer reckons if he'd seen it coming that he wouldn't have gone down. It was just a reaction.

He jumped up, asked the referee not to send Keane off. David Beckham got involved. Keane was sent for an early bath. Niall Quinn attempted to shake his hand on the way off. Alex Ferguson took his hairdryer gob to Quinn. All very memorable. McAteer sees the Punch and Judy comedy of it all, but regrets it too.

"I can't speak for him, but I wish it never happened and I'm sure he's the same. We've done a lot together in our careers, played against each other too - that was an unfortunate day and an unfortunate thing that happened. It would be nice to shake his hand again and play a game of football against him."

After that match, McAteer got offered an oodle of money to put his name to a tabloid tackle from behind on Keane. Couldn't do it.

"I have the utmost respect for Roy Keane the footballer. I don't believe in everything he says off the pitch, but that's opinions. That's human beings. It would be nice to be on a pitch with him again. He's one of the best players in the world.

"You want to play against those guys. To be on the pitch with Roy Keane would be fantastic. One more game against him would be nice. Especially after last time and what happened.

"I've always liked watching him. I've always wondered what makes him tick. He's a winner. I like to think of myself as a winner, but I'm not in the same mould as him. We're the same age. I see what he does. He has been so successful. He's doing something right.

"I've known him a long time. There are some things that are bad in his life, something he has to deal with in his own way. I'd love to know how that brain works. I'd like to have a coffee with him. I like the man. He's a winner."

Coffee? Playing against him? The last question is so inevitable it almost asks itself. How about sharing a dressing-room. (Close your eyes, green jerseys on pegs. McAteer 7. Keane 6.) "Of course I would. He's a person I'd want on a football pitch. When he's on the pitch with you he has an aura. You know he frightens people. He has that stature.

"He's one of those people. I remember playing Millwall in January. I got caught up with Dennis Wise. My game went I was so caught up.

"One thing that disappointed me, though: when the mad tackles and the loose fists and the throat grabbing was going on I wanted all the lads to be there and stand up for each other. You have to be all there looking after each other. I know for a fact that if I'm on a football pitch with Roy Keane he'll be there for me - 100 per cent.

"He mightn't like me off the pitch. He mightn't like my character. We don't see eye to eye, but he'd be there for me, he'd be in amongst it. I'd back him up. As I'd do for any one of the lads. Gary Kelly was the same. He'd always be there for you. I'm not kissing Roy's arse here. That was what we had with the Irish team. That's what we all expected."

So many questions. Maybe the betrayal of that expectation of each other was what made the rupture between Keane and the players so bitter, so quickly. It's all conjecture for now. On the day before an FA Cup semi-final, there are other issues.

In January, when Millwall beat Sunderland, McAteer's own continuing feud reached a new low. Headbutts and handbagging. Late tackles and bad tackles.

Afterwards McAteer commented: "I've never had much time for Dennis. He's made a living out of being a cheat."

Wise was unperturbed. Indeed, the winding up of McAteer continued on the Monday when McAteer got a call from Wise wondering if he could have his jersey.

"I have the jersey in my locker. I didn't want to waste the stamp money. I'll give it to him in person."

That they'll be looking out for each other tomorrow isn't in doubt.

"While I'm out there and the adrenalin is running I can't afford to let that Wise business happen again. I'd let myself down getting into another personal battle. Dennis is another interesting man, another winner in his own way.

"He goes about things in a not very nice way. That bugs me. Upsets me. On the day I'm sure we'll come up against each other. We'll tackle each other, eh strongly. We'll be looking for each other. Me and him have always had nasty games."

If it's needed, than he'll play the role of hardman. He'll take injections for his stomach injury, too, and hope to get through the game. In that respect, the season has been a struggle and every game is a bonus.

Ireland is a little bit the same way. He was called into the squad for the first time in the Brian Kerr era for the game against Brazil. Glad to be back. Knew it wouldn't be like picking up an old thread. Too self-aware for that.

"Brian does it his way. He called me back in for a big game and I was honoured. It was funny, though, I felt like I was on trial. It was hard work. The lads have grown up. They're at top teams. They're bigger and uglier. There's a different confidence around the place."

He sensed the role he had to fill and moved to fill it. A footballing Zelig. "It was tough finding a space. I couldn't go back being Trigger. It would have been easy to lip back into it, but there was nobody to play to.

"I kept away from that. Just got on with the football. I roomed on me own. Maybe I was supposed to room with Roy, but he didn't turn up."

He missed the old atmosphere. Was fascinated by the new ambience.

"The lads are all settled. There's no place for a Trigger. I stuck on me own mainly. There was no Mick Byrne or Tony Hickey. Nobody banging on the door singing at the top of his voice at nine in the morning. I miss that and Tony and the stories, but Brian is interesting. He likes a meeting, does Brian. Likes to get a lot into the day. He told me he has a two-year plan. I want to be part of that."

So here he is. Final scenes. He says that Babb is shaping to be a decent coach. That he'll call on him when he's managing Real Madrid.

Meanwhile, Millwall. Last words. Frame by frame he's running out of script before he runs out of steam, but still uttering better lines than almost anyone else on the stage.