Even if you are not a Brookie buff, or only an occasional viewer of the Liverpudlian soap, chances are you'll have heard of the famous Body Under the Patio storyline. However, you may not be familiar with the Behind the Scenes scenario which comes to Glasgow University's Gilmorehill Centre for Theatre, Film, and Television.

Organised by Tony Pearson, head of the centre and the Theatre, Film, and TV Department at the university, Brookside Behind the Scenes is a two-day event designed to give both the public and people with a special interest in broadcast media a practical insight into how the soap is constructed. Brookside creator Phil Redmond will be leading a 15-strong team of actors, writers, and crew, all of whom will be on hand to dispense advice, answer questions, hold workshops, and reconstruct scenes from the popular soap.

This will be the first major television event to be held at the impressive new centre, which opened last autumn with a remit to promote events for public access as well as the benefit of students. It is not, however, the first time Brookside has come to the university. The relationship between Phil Redmond's soap and the Theatre, Film, and TV Studies department is a long-standing one. When Pearson saw the opening episode of the independently-made Brookside on the first night of Channel 4 in 1982, he was amazed by how ''strikingly different'' it was to any other soap. He contacted the programme's makers, Mersey Television, and was invited down to Liverpool to carry out academic research on the show.

Because of his academic background and great interest in the programme, Pearson was involved in various educational projects organised by Mersey Television from an early stage in Brookside's existence.

He says: ''In 1988, Brookside's makers decided that they wanted to come to Scotland to do a script-to-screen project up here. They recognised that the audience demographics were very strong in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow - there's a kind of solidarity between Glasgow and Liverpool, because they're both working-class cities - and because they knew that the programme was cherished up here, they wanted to come and meet their audience.''

The two-day event took place in October 1988 and was a great success. Three years later, the department looked set to join forces again with Mersey Television when it was part of the North West Television consortium which was bidding for Granada's ITV franchise.

The bid was unsuccessful but, had it been accepted, the department would have contributed research and Pearson would have acted as academic consultant to a massive documentary project entitled Television: Where Next?, which would have examined TV technology and the medium's likely impact on our lives in the next decade. Despite the fact that this ambitious project was a non-starter, Mersey Television maintained its links with the university, and when the Gilmorehill Centre was opened, the TV company suggested that the two organisations collaborate once more.

So far, Brookside Behind the Scenes has generated a great deal of interest, particularly from members of the public keen to come along to today's proceedings, during which they could find themselves working alongside actors Karen Drury (Susannah Farnham), Tiffany Chapman (Rachel Wright), Philip Olivier (Tinhead), and Louis Emerick (Mick Johnson). Both this morning and tomorrow morning, participants will observe how a scene develops through the writing, rehearsal, shooting, and editing stages. They will then be shown the finished product and be able to compare it with the version as it will be screened. Some lucky participants will even be invited to act beside the soap stars.

A few tickets, costing #20 full price and #10 concession, will be available at the centre for today's Public Day and tomorrow's Education Day (for those in the media). Please note that the event is not open to anyone under the age of 18.

n The Gilmorehill Centre is at 9 University Avenue.