RIVER City actress Libby McArthur will lead the line of celebrity mums in Greenock next week but is urging all the dads to come along too.

The TV favourite is heading to the Beacon Arts Centre on Friday February 12 and Saturday 13 with in Mum’s the Word 2 alongside Still Game’s Jane McCarry, Deacon Blue singer Lorraine McIntosh, Balamory star Julie Wilson Nimmo and former Clyde 1 DJ Suzie McGuire.

It is a new production based on the original comedy but has been brought up-to-date with the inclusion of the hilarious run-ins between parents and their teenagers.

The mum-of-one said: “The women in Greenock are going to love this but I want the dads to come too. It’s Mum’s the Word and folk think it’s all about mums but I kid you not we’ve got more and more hands-on dads these days and thank goodness.

“It’s one of the silver linings in the fact you can’t afford for one person to be out a job - you can’t afford for mum to stay at home.

“If you’re in mental health and a parent you’ll get this, unless your off your head and in some sort of crazy denial about how much stuff comes up when you have the shocking realisation that you’re actually somebody else’s mum or dad.

“I remember when I got pregnant I said to a girl it’s the instant inadequacy you feel and she never thought of it like that.

“It’s an incredible cast. What a great bunch of women. 

“I just look at them and think ‘you guys are dead funny’ and it does make you want to raise your game and think ‘am I going to be funny?’.

“There’s something great about a bunch of women together.”

It may be a new script and testing the waters of those troublesome teenage years for the first time but for Libby, who also starred in the original, it’s easy to get into character because she’s been there and done that with son Brian when he was growing up.

She said: “My baby is 32 this year and there’s a sort of role reversal on the go now, he’s my benchmark for being sensible.

“Mum’s the Word 2 - the remix - has very much got that going head-to-head with teenagers.

“I remember my son saying to me once ‘mum I hate you, no I really hate you, no mum listen I’m saying I really, really hate you’ but by that time I was a bit better at parenting and was able to say to him ‘it’s allowed, sorted, if you want’.

“The first time I did Mum’s the Word in 2002 it was way ahead of all Vagina Monologues and all that, it was kind of the first one out.

“Women were squealing in the audience because nobody had actually done this yet - nobody had actually said being a parent is a bloody nightmare, it’s a one-way street.

“It was like there was this conspiracy of silence amongst parents that you don’t go there ‘is anybody else rubbish at this and want to pull their hair out?’.

“I had felt all those things myself, that thing of ‘I’m too wee for all this’, ‘why are they letting me look after a baby’, ‘when are they going to come and get him to go back to the safety of the hospital’.

“All that stuff of having no idea what to do next, wondering where’s the manual, I need the instruction book - I must’ve left it at the hospital.

“I thought I was the only one who felt like that then you realise we sold out the King’s for three weeks in a row in 2002 and that was because every woman in the audience thought they were the only one who felt like a complete and utter numpty.

“I’m excited about what we’re going to bring to the audience and give folk a really good night.

“It’ll be a night that’s talked about but there’s also very poignant things in it. And the Beacon is a great space.”

For tickets and more information contact the Beacon box office on 723723 or visit www.beaconartscentre.co.uk