Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were one of the most successful musical duos in popular music in the 1960s. They met as children in New York and began recording together as teenagers under the name Tom and Jerry before eventually using their own names and had a string of hits including The Sounds of Silence, Mrs Robinson, The Boxer, and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Some of their songs were used on the soundtrack of the hit movie The Graduate (1967).

But their personal relationship was complicated and after the release of their 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970) – their biggest selling studio record – the musical partnership ended. They would reunite several times over the years, including, in 1981, for a concert in New York's Central Park attended by an estimated 500,000 people that resulted in another successful album and another concert at the Colosseum in Rome in 2004 that apparently drew an even bigger crowd. But they haven't performed any shows together since 2010 and it's questionable whether they will again. A tour to Australia would seem even less likely.

At this stage, the next best thing for fans might be The Simon and Garfunkel Story. Gregory Clarke will be making his first trip to Australia as Paul Simon in the show – part biography, part concert – which has been running for two and a half years in Britain. He's been playing the role since January opposite Joe Sterling as Art Garfunkel and has travelled with it to several European cities, but this tour to Australia and New Zealand will be the biggest journey he's made with it yet.

"It's going to be great," Clarke says.

He says he came to work in the show having enjoyed Simon and Garfunkel's work for a long time – "Very much ... I'd been a fan for years" – although he never dreamed as a young actor that one day he'd be playing Paul Simon.

"It would be like playing Elvis or John Lennon."

But he was cast – "I'm blessed I have the famous Paul Simon nose", he jokes. He was also shorter than Sterling, who had the appropriate mop of curly hair. He took on the challenge to look and sound as much like Simon as he could, studying recordings and videos of the singer-songwriter to capture his sound and performing style, including the way he played the guitar.

He's going to take the opportunity to catch up with family members and friends while he's out here and to do some sightseeing while touring Australia in the show, which tells the story of Simon and Garfunkel right back from their early days as schoolboys and features "all the great songs you want to hear", he says.

It will include a recreation of sections of that Central Park reunion concert, at which they played not only their own hits as Simon and Garfunkel but some of Simon's solo hits like Slip Slidin' Away.

Clarke says, "The last I heard, Simon and Garfunkel had no plans to re-form any time soon – the best way to hear their stuff is to come and see our show."

He thinks that in a long relationship like theirs there will inevitably be ups and downs and believes there is a deep respect between them for each other's talents – especially Simon's songwriting ability and Garfunkel's beautiful voice.

Clarke, 36, has been a professional actor for the past 12 years, having worked at a series of jobs before deciding that acting was what he really wanted to do and attending drama school. And, he says, he's managed to work fairly steadily over the years.

"I've done all sorts of things from Shakespeare to West End musicals," he says, as well as television shows and commercials.

One of the highlights was playing the entire run – "18 or 20 months" – of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Woman in White, his first big job out of drama school in which he played a con man and a servant named Louis.

He fondly remembers working with three actors in it named Michael. One of them was the Australian Michael Cormick – who recently performed a concert in Canberra at Teatro Vivaldi and, while he played a dastardly character in the Victorian melodrama, was, Clarke says, a very nice man in real life.

"He was brilliant and it was great to work with him."

The other two Michaels were British stars, Michael Ball and Michael Crawford – the latter will be particularly familiar to Australians who recall his television role as the child-like, accident-prone Frank Spencer in the sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.

"He was such a nice guy as well ... we would ask him to do the Frank Spencer voice and he would pause and get a glint in his eye and say [in full Frank Spencer tones] 'Ooh, I can't!'"