Martin Compston reveals his insider guide to Las Vegas – and the awe-inspiring attraction visitors can’t miss

Martin Compston looks surprisingly comfortable in a slightly camp cowboy costume on a dude ranch in Nevada.

And so he should: the western state is now his home half the year, as the Line of Duty star lives between his native Scotland and his wife’s home city of Las Vegas.

He shows the place off in his new three-part travelogue. Here’s his local’s look-see on five spots that visitors mustn’t miss.

The free show

Growing up, when I thought of Vegas, I thought of Ocean’s Eleven, and that famous last shot when they’re all at the Bellagio Fountains. Go at dusk, 6.30 or 7.00pm, because when the music comes on and those jets start, it feels like “Vegas is about to start tonight”. There’s that excitement in the air, like something’s going to happen. Someone’s going to have the worst night of their life, but someone’s going to have the best night of their life.

I got to go behind the scenes with the scuba divers who keep the fountains working and to press the button that starts the show. There weren’t any proposals on my shift, which they often get, but there’s always a buzz there and you don’t need to eat at any of the expensive fountainside restaurants or anything. I just take my wee boy up to stand outside and watch the fountain show: you don’t need to spend a cent and he loves it.

The big night out

My ideal date night for the missus and me is a bit of dinner then a Cirque du Soleil show. They’re iconic – Mystère has been playing at the Treasure Island Hotel for more than 30 years – and O, which is performed in and out of water, is mind-blowing; but all the shows are incredible.

For the Channel 4 documentary, I got a chance to go on stage with the “flyers”, who do incredible backflips between poles suspended in the air. I don’t think I’ll be leaving Line of Duty to join them any time soon: I haven’t quite got the ability for it yet, and it’s rough on the groin area sliding down those ropes. They do have some pretty impressive codpieces to protect them, but those lads have to be tough!

THE cultural history fix

One wonderfully offbeat place to visit is the Neon Museum. I love Rat Pack history, and at the museum’s Neon Boneyard they’ve got all these old neon signs, some of which Frank Sinatra himself would have known. If you go in the evening, when the signs are turned on, it’s beautiful – wandering round it would be the perfect quirky first date in some indie movie – but I actually took my wife’s dad and stepmum when they came to stay.

The place to eat

I’d give a massive recommendation to the city’s Arts District, known as the 18b. I’m quite ashamed that I didn’t know about it until we started making this show, but in my defence it used to be a bit of a bad area down there. In fact, it’s still got some sketchy parts, but that’s kind of the charm of it – and it’s got my new favourite restaurant. It’s in the show, actually: an Italian called Esther’s Kitchen, and I took [The Last Leg co-host] Alex Brooker there when he came to town recently.

The chef has worked with all these superstars like Gordon Ramsay, but he found this area that needed a bit of love and built the restaurant, then shops start popping up around it. There’s some phenomenal little art galleries round there, too, and an amazing barbecue place called SoulBelly a couple of doors down.

The escape

You can take a helicopter trip out to the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas, but it’s actually only a two-and-a-half-hour drive – and it’s truly awe-inspiring. From the Skywalk [a glass-floored horseshoe-shaped viewing bridge cantilevered out over the canyon; grandcanyonwest.com/skywalk], you can look down and see helicopters flying what looks like miles below you.

The money from the entry tickets goes back to the Hualapai tribe, who own that part of the canyon, and they can explain to you their history, what the land means to them and how it’s such a religious place, with every rock sacred. They told me that people sometimes take stones home, but end up mailing them back because they start having bad luck.

The funny thing for me was that on the way there I was waiting to see if a show I was in would get renewed – and I found out it didn’t. But if you’re going to get bad news, that’s the place to get it, because the views put everything in perspective. At the Grand Canyon, you’re like, “Who cares?”

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