First there was Bob the Builder, now let's hear it for Liam the

HOLLYWOOD hunk Liam Neeson has revealed a secret pipe dream he's had for nearly 10 years. For he wants to star on the big screen in his most modest role ever - as a common Irish plumber.

The Ballymena-born actor, who played Steven Spielberg's Holocaust hero Oskar Schindler, Republican leader Michael Collins and a Jedi warrior in the new Star Wars, is about to see his bizarre wish come true.

Neeson, 48, is to produce and star in a blockbuster COMEDY thriller about a hapless Irish plumber who finds himself on a job out in Iraq, just as Saddam Hussein's armies invade Kuwait, leaving him in a spot of very hot water.

The star, speaking from his home in New York, exclusively revealed to the Sunday Mirror: "It's taken a very long time to get this project together, but I've always wanted to make this film, ever since 1991 in fact.

"It's based on a true story of someone I know, someone I went to school with, and as well as the comic moments there are some very disturbing ones as well.

"We'll start shooting later this year, the American actors' strike permitting."

Neeson revealed the script is by award-winning comedy writing duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who wrote such TV hit series as The Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen Pet and Ronnie Barker's Porridge.

It's a major change of role for Neeson. Until now he has concentrated on huge heroic roles, notably the 1993 Steven Spielberg epic Schindler, which scooped a batch of Oscars.

In the new Star Wars trilogy, he was the Jedi warrior Qui-Gon Jinn.

"The first time I heard about the story I just thought it was amazing, it's so unique to think of an Irish plumber stranded in Iraq, and I wanted to do it.

"Other than that, I don't want to give to much away, that would be really letting the cat out of the bag.

"Everything's ready to go, and I can't wait, but yes, it's quite a change for me to star as a plumber."

The 6ft 4in actor, who has lived in New York for 14 years, is happily married to actress Natasha Richardson and they have two children.

He is currently presenting BBC 2's three-part history series The Greeks, Crucible of Civilisation, another unusual role for actor.

"I hugely enjoyed doing The Greeks, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn something for myself, and with modern computer and film techniques we were able to bring the ancient Greeks to viewers in a really cinematic and dramatic, rather than a cold documentary."

When it was shown in America last year, the three-part series achieved the highest ever rating for a historical documentary, 10 million viewers.

Liam, who was brought up a Catholic in a largely Protestant area, where he once admitted he felt "like a second class citizen" is one of Hollywood's most sought after actors, but he says he'll never live in LA again, preferring the relative "normality" of New York, "Where you can bump into people like doctors, bricklayers and yes plumbers, LA just isn't real like that," he said.

"I spent about five years in Los Angeles when I first came over to America, it's a strange place where everything seems to revolve around the film or the music business - and nothing else.

AFTER you have spent a certain amount of time there, it starts to get a bit warped, and my emotional graph-line just levelled out.

"I was a bit concerned living in LA, I felt I hadn't really learned anything and I had to get out. I don't mind going to LA at all, you have to pay your dues, but as long as I've got the return flight coupon in my hand, I'm happy."

Liam says it's unlikely he will ever return home to Ireland permanently:

"Once you have children and they start school and make their own friends, it's harder to move back, I think we're here for the foreseeable future," he said.

The first new film he'll be seen in this year is Martin Scorsese's long-awaited thriller Gangs of New York, in which he has a role as a priest.

Then he'll star with Harrison Ford in a new blockbuster called K19, The Widow Maker, which sees the two stars as Russian Navy commanders, desperately trying to save a stricken nuclear sub.

"I'm very lucky at the moment," he told the Sunday Mirror, "I've got work booked up to about this time next year, possibly even longer.

"It's a great job when things are going well, but being an actor can just as easily be feast or famine.

"When things are going well it's great, when it's not it can be crucifying."

Last July Neeson had a lucky escape when his motorbike hit a deer on a country road outside New York and he fractured his pelvis in two places in the crash:

"I'm now about 98 per cent fit again," he said, "Which is lucky because the films this year are being done one after the other and there are some very physical scenes."

Liam says presenting a documentary about ancient Greece isn't all that odd, and certainly not as odd as becoming a plumber:

"When I was a young actor in Belfast and then in Dublin, I did all kinds of work, that's what you do as an actor, it's all part and parcel of the job.

"My feet have always been firmly on the ground."

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