IF YOU are setting out to be a right bastard, you probably wouldn't want your nearest and dearest around.

But for Jo Stone-Fewings it only made the occasion the richer.

For he made sure that all his family made the journey from Hereford to the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon for his performance as the Bastard in Shakespeare's King John.

A pupil of Aylestone School, he first got the acting bug when he went on a school trip to Stratford to see Twelfth Night, with John Thaw as Sir Toby Belch.

He told The Hereford Times: "It was a revelation to me - a quite extraordinary experience.

"I had previously thought of Shakespeare as 'just poetry and stuff' but to see it all springing to life on the stage ..

"I remember the whole thing so vividly, the smell of the theatre, the anticipation and going back home on the bus there was a real buzz."

After Aylestone it was on to Herefordshire College of Art and Design and a theatre studies course where his tutor Paul Murray gave him substantial encouragement and became his 'dramatic guru', inspiring him to take the plunge and study drama full-time at college in Wales.

Since then it has been one achievement after another with credits at the National Theatre and the Young Vic as well as the RSC.

But his parents are still in the city and one of his three sisters Deb is living nearby, beginning to carve out a name for herself as a writer.

Recently he has been delighting television audiences in Best of Both Worlds on Sunday nights and settling into a new home in Brighton.

Not that he's going to spend much time there over the next few months with the role of Orsino for the RSC's production of Twelfth Night imminent too.

There's been a concentrated 10-week rehearsal of King John, the earliest in Shakespeare's History cycle and a rarely performed work. This Gregory Doran production is, however, not part of the celebrated cycle but launches the Stratford Summer festival.

Jo explains: "I've never come across a Shakespeare play like King John - it is totally anarchic and so is my role in it. It is also extremely relevant for us now when we know our politicians and our rulers are not our betters.

"We see on our TVs, read in our newspapers that kings and would-be kings commit sexual infidelities or that duchesses have their toes sucked so we are perhaps readier to accept what Shakespeare is writing about than previous generations.

"Human nature does not change."

King John, played with scintillating humour by Guy Henry, is the younger brother of the fabled Richard Coeur-de-Lion, succeeding to the throne with the support of his mother Eleanor (Alison Fiske in sparky form).

But rivals, opposition and intrigue threaten his position at every turn with the French ready to revolt or align with whoever appears most likely to advance their situation.

All is cynical manipulation and self-seeking and laid bare in a minimalist set which concentrates all attention on the virtuosity of performance.

An oily cardinal (David Collings), militant Dukes and Dauphins (Trevor Martin and John Hopkins) and a brace of conniving earls point up the debased nature of government.

There are memorable moments of true poignancy from Kelly Hunter, mourning her son's death and high farce from Guy Henry while Hereford's Bastard strides through the action, presenting a down-to-earth antidote to much of the political chicanery - without forgetting to set his own agenda.

s Jo Stone-Fewings - on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company.