TONY Roper's new autobiography reveals a life - and a character - that will surprise fans of the twinkly-eyed funster of Scottish showbiz.

Aged seven - as revealed in the Evening Times on Friday - Tony almost killed his older brother Pat when after being goaded, he plunged a breadknife into his brother's back.

Pat Roper forgave his brother, although it would be some time before he dared turn his back during heated debat).

But a few years later young Denis Roper ( as he was christened, but labelled Junior to avoid confusion with his dad) pulled a stunt that was redolent of his Rab C. Nesbitt character, Jamesie Cotter; he cheated to get into prestigious St Mungo's Academy, copying the work of a clever pal.

And in 1956 the temper resurfaced when the 15-year-old began working life in a pit in Bowfield in Fife (a career choice fuelled by romanticised mineshaft movie notions.)

A few days into the job, Tony almost broke the back of a gangly teenage workmate.

Why? For a wheeze, a Fifer workmate had placed a red-hot piece of coal on Roper's chest as he caught 20 winks one lunchtime - causing unusually painful heartburn.

"I lost it," he writes. "I got him strung out across my back and pressed him against the back wall. I kept pushing and I could feel his chest caving in, but that just made me want to hurt him more."

But the teenager wasn't much different from most Glaswegian youths. Back in the Forties and Fifties, the city was hardly a backdrop for a a Frank Capra movie.

Tony's father was a war hero who ran a small fruitshop and florist's business, but Denis Snr drank, smoked and gambled too much. And was all too handy with his fists. Tony's mother Susie once defended herself by taking a flat iron to her husband's soon-to-be flat skull.

"We weren't an unusual family," he says. "For a man to come in drunk and hit his wife was not out of the ordinary. Nor for the woman to get her own back.

"But I wrote about it to capture this juxtaposition with what happened to my father.

"He was in the machine gun corps, the suicide squad, and coming from a world where death was imminent he then had to look after a family, which was a massive adjustment."

Tony adds: "I hated my father when I was young. He was a drunk. Cold. And violent a lot of the time. But in learning about his life, I realise now I love him."

It's obvious young Tony bonded with his mother. But the book doesn't reveal a single girlfriend; no school crushes, rites of passage tales.

"I had some adventures that I'm best keeping quiet about," he writes. But in sliding over any details of genuine young love, does it suggest he didn't in fact care for women?

"I never wrote Jamesie Cotter - that was Ian Pattison - but I admit there was a lot of Cotter in me at the time.

"I just went through women. I used them. I was cold, unfeeling. There was no tenderness.

"The life was about going out trying to get sex. It wasn't about telling your mother 'I've met a nice lassie, Ma.'

"Later on, my wife (Isobel James, a former dancer) was warned against me. And rightly so. But another reason I didn't write about early affairs or mention names was because the girls would have been upset by the association. It could have destroyed people."

He pauses to reflect; "Once, during filming of Only An Excuse? we did an Andy Roxburgh sketch in which the Scotland manager was being lampooned over a sexual affair.

"All for the sake of a half a minute gag. I argued it was entirely unfair."

His honesty about his parallels with his TV character is refreshing. But the book reveals many positive traits.

Young Tony was a grafter. After the mines experience,he worked in a range of jobs, from Bilsland Bakery van boy, where the nickname 'Tony' became attached forever, to labouring in building sites.

Whatever the work environment, he loved being with people; entertaining them, being entertained.

He loved a sense of community, of shared experience, which no doubt helped him become an actor aged 25, and later to write his worldwide theatre hit, The Steamie.

But he doesn't write at any length about his showbiz life. Is this to avoid any memories of Cotter-like behaviour? "Not at all," he says, smiling.

"It's because with any autobiographies I read I find the journey is more interesting than the arrival."

Tony Roper admits his book is not a joke-fest. "But it's real," he says, smiling.

It may shift perception of the actor/writer but it won't change it. He'll still be the twinkly-eyed Peter Pan of Scottish acting.

"I hope so," he says in a laugh that's Jamesie Cotter-free.

l Tony Roper: I'll No Tell You Again, Black and White, £14.99.