Six years ago, Watford actor Chris Wheeler was playing drums in the on-stage band in the show The West End Men in a village hall in Fleet in Hampshire.

Two years later and he was the show’s producer as it prepared to open in the West End.

Since that sell-out run, Chris and his theatre company Milton Morrissey have taken the show on two hit UK tours, been to China and Singapore, and are now preparing for a third UK tour – which contains perhaps the most important date for Chris so far.

“I’m nervous, it’s going to be a huge thing, bringing The West End Men to the Watford Colosseum,“ says 27-year-old Chris of the show which stars real-life West End men Marcus Collins, Glenn Carter, James Bisp and Alexis Gerred performing songs from the biggest shows in musical theatre as well as a selection of some great pop and rock classics.

“It means a lot to me because my family has been involved in local theatre for about 60 years.“

Chris, a former Abbots Langley Primary School and Kings Langley School pupil, grew up watching his grandmother, Marlene Knight, singing and acting with Cassio Operatic Society (now Cassio Productions) at Watford Palace Theatre, and his uncle, Martyn Knight, moving from am dram, also with Cassio Operatic Society, to the West End, where he was in the original cast of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in 1985, as well as South Pacific and Metropolis. Martyn is now a theatre director and choreographer.

“Growing up with this influence, the theatre was all I knew and it was all I wanted to do,“ says Chris, who was a member of the Pump House Youth Theatre from the age of eight until he left to join the Guildford School of Acting at the University of Surrey.

True to form, Chris’ first job was at the Watford Palace Theatre, where he worked in the box office and did casual work from ages 16 to 19.

Leaving drama college, Chris joined the touring cast of Bill Kenwright’s Dreamboats and Petticoats – coincidentally playing the drummer in an on-stage band and “having the time of his life“ – and appearing on television in an episode of Doctors and at the Royal Festival Hall in a classical music event, as well as The West End Men as the drummer, before deciding that his career lay in putting on productions, rather than starring in them.

In its previous incarnations, The West End Men has featured musical theatre stars Lee Mead, Stephen Rahman-Hughes, David Thaxton, Matt Willis, Matt Rawle and Ramin Karimloo.

There are songs from the likes of Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, West Side Story and South Pacific but the stars also get to perform their own selection of songs, making the show slightly different with each cast change it undergoes.

“Marcus Collins does an incredible version of Lately by Stevie Wonder,“ says Chris. “You get to see what makes the guys tick, what songs they enjoy singing themselves.“

The show has already been to Asia twice, once in 2013 and again last year, and Chris and his theatre company partner Paul Morrissey already have plans to tour it in Europe.

But for now, Chris is concentrating on the Watford show.

“I’m a local lad and I’ve always wanted Watford to do well and bring West End theatre here to give people something to be proud of and to enjoy. This is the big one.“