A MOTHER, a daughter, three possible Dads and a trip down the aisle you'll never forget!

At the last count, Mamma Mia has been seen by 60 million people worldwide. There have been 49 productions of the show fashioned from the ABBA songbook in 16 different languages. Plus, of course, it spawned the massively successful movie starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters and Colin Firth. And yet, for its nearly two decades trotting around the globe, Mamma Mia has never once toured the UK. Until now. Why is that?

“Partly the success of the show in London,” explains the show’s producer Judy Craymer. “When we opened I asked someone’s advice about a UK tour. They said watch your midweek matinee because when that begins to go soft then you should think about touring. It never did go soft."

Instead the show went to Canada and Australia, then toured the US and took up residence in Las Vegas before landing on Broadway the month after September 11. It stayed for 12 years.

More recent conquests have been of China in Mandarin, while a vast cruise ship tours the Caribbean with a Mamma Mia that can be seen by 1000 seafarers at a time. Craymer has seen the show on every continent but has yet to be lured aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship. “I was asked when they did the technical rehearsal between Hamburg and the Solent in November,” she recalls wryly.

The UK tour arrives at Southampton's Mayflower Theatre for a three and a half week run on September 13.

Jacqueline Braun, who plays Rosie in the show, said: "I did it for a year and a half in Vienna in German and when I was asked the question to do it here, of course I said yes. It's not a lot of shows that are written for a female hero of the story with a couple of brilliant roles next to her. It really doesn't happen a lot so I'm going to milk this until they chuck me out! It's a great show and a brilliant love story."

Sara Poyzer, who stars in Mamma Mia alongside her real life husband Richard Standing as Sam Carmichael, has been playing Donna Sheridan for five years all over the world. She added: "I think it's so special. It's a love story and a tale of friendships old and new. It's very believable and we have such a laugh.

"Meryl Streep did it before me thankfully. I've nicked a couple of ideas, I'm not going to lie!

"What makes it so special is the close relationship between the script and the songs. The songs really do feel as though they have been written for the show, they are not just there for the sake of it. They are brilliant songs. They are just so catchy.

"One of the first albums I ever got was Abba's Greatest Hits which I played to death. Even now after all this time in the show if I hear one of them being played in a shop I can't help myself singing along."

The show has been going since 1999, but its producer first had the idea for a film or a stage show based on Abba’s songs many years earlier when she was Tim Rice’s assistant on Chess, the musical he wrote with Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. “I started talking to them about it in the mid-80s, and then in about 1995 Bjorn said, ‘If you can get the right story, maybe."

The story centres on the search for a father. Twenty-year-old bride-to-be Sophie has grown up on a Greek island where her mother Donna runs a rackety taverna. Sophie doesn’t know who her father is, so rummages through her mother’s old diary and secretly invites three potential candidates. As a feel-good plot, it is a long way from the doom-laden blockbuster musicals which dominated in the 80s and 90s and Craymer thinks that helps explain its longevity.

“The show has a big heart and people love it so they return. In the audience sometimes one member will turn to the other and say, ‘Is this your first time?’ It’s like ‘welcome to the club’. It’s also a show that people like to see in a community atmosphere. They like to bring friends and family. Kids are brought up on the DVD of the movie and now’s their chance to see the show.”

Mamma Mia! had good reviews but it mainly conquered the world by word of mouth – and, of course, wonderful songs. The show’s creators had no real idea how deep those songs are in all our bloodstream until they first launched them upon an audience.

“They stood up and cheered at the end and everybody was dancing. Somebody said to me, this is just the first preview audience. Don’t expect this to happen again."

People have been dancing at the end of the show ever since to Waterloo and Dancing Queen, sung by Donna and the Dynamos in wonderful 70s spandex outfits. One night the audience proved so immovable that the front of house staff had to make an announcement that ‘the Dynamos had left the building’ otherwise the audience would have stayed all night. On another occasion they were joined onstage by Anna-Frid Lyngstad.

“Frida came quietly one night, she wanted no fuss. She loved the show so much that she asked if she could go onstage at the end with cast, she did and she sang Dancing Queen in front of the audience. And that was her quiet night out!"

There may just be another twist in the Mamma Mia! story in the shape of a second film. “I think it would be a companion piece. It would only happen if we all agreed it was the right thing. People love that film and those characters and love being in that moment of escapism on the Greek island. It’s good for us to always be thinking.”

Mamma Mia! is at Mayflower Theatre from September 13 to October 8.

Tickets from mayflower.org.uk or 023 8071 1811.