HE launched his career in Playdays, he played a fur-clad Neanderthal in Walking With Cavemen and he's now starring in Darwen as a manipulative martial-arts master called Merlin in a contemporary reworking of Arthurian legend.

His name's David Rubin and, after listening to him describing his eclectic resum, you can't help wonder why his career has led him to plump for such an astonishing variety of parts.

It turns out that fear of being typecast forms part of the answer.

"I left college about 15 years ago," explained London-born David, "and I started out in children's TV.

"I worked as a singer and dancer on Playdays for years. But then I started to feel typecast, so I decided to break out of that."

All of which is a fairly familiar story -- at least as far as actors are concerned. However, the lengths David went to to escape his children's TV background were extreme, to say the least.

"I did lots of musicals," he said, "and then I went into Shakespeare plays.

"Then I got offered the lead caveman in Walking With Cavemen. It was great -- seven weeks' filming in southern Africa, then in Iceland.

"I didn't find Iceland too cold -- we were wearing lots of furs, as the cavemen would have done. It was all done very authentically."

David's latest role as Merlin in The Legend of King Arthur is an equally exciting project -- not least because of the innovative way it's being performed.

"The production uses Brazilian martial arts called Capoeira as its theme," he said.

"Although the setting has been changed, the martial arts world has the same kind of chivalric code as the Arthurian world.

"As Merlin I'm not involved in the fighting very much, but the Capoeira theme does affect the way I move around the stage.

"It took a lot of rehearsals to get the moves just right. A trainer came in to help us and we compressed two years' work into five weeks. It was intensive stuff!"

Having spent his career diving headlong into the unexpected, David's Merlin was never going to be a conventional wizard with a long white beard and flowing robes.

"In this version, Merlin is less of a wizard and more of a manipulator," said David. "He decides Arthur is going to be his project and tries to control him as he grows up.

"I like to think he's a bit dark. He's not averse to a bit of murder if it helps him win the game."

Catch David in The Legend of King Arthur on November 21 at Darwen Library Theatre. Call (01254) 706006 for tickets.