Comedian Ed Byrne playing Gerry Ryan, Brian Kennedy as your average Paddy who sings down the pub and the odd scene of England pretending to be Ireland – just some of what can be expected in the film version of Tony Hawks' surreal travelogue Round Ireland with a Fridge. First published in 1998, the book went on to shift 800,000 copies. Now it's set to be turned into a major film with Hawks in the lead role.

"What we're trying to make is a nice gentle film coming at a time when everything and everybody is doom and gloom," says 49-year-old Hawks, taking a break in filming last week.

The reason comedian Hawks found himself hitching Ireland with a fridge in 1997 dates back to his first trip to this country in the early '90s. "I was getting a lift in this car and we passed an old guy on the side of the road who was hitching with a fridge. It just struck me as very strange. I remember recounting what I'd seen a few weeks later to friends in a pub back home in Brighton and saying that if there was one country where you could hitch with a fridge, it was Ireland. That's what sparked a friend to bet me £100 it couldn't be done."

Never one to back down, a month later Tony found himself on the side of the road outside Dublin daring motorists to offer him and his fridge a lift. He took four weeks to traverse Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Wexford and Waterford, but the world might not have noticed had it not been for one Gerry Ryan of RTé. "Gerry got to hear about it and had me on one morning," says Hawks. "Then I started ringing in every day. Pretty soon I was 'the fridge man' and the whole country was offering me lifts."

Hawks originally approached Ryan to play himself in the film but, due to his radio commitments, the DJ couldn't take up the offer. Instead filmgoers will see comedian Ed Byrne playing the very similar-sounding RTé DJ Dylan Daley. "He's a kind of a Gerry Ryan," says Hawks. "It's just a shame we couldn't get Gerry himself but Ed's DJ is a guy with the same feel."

Other well-known faces in the 99% Irish cast are Brian Kennedy as a pub singer; Michael Redmond, best known for playing the deadpan Father Stone in Father Ted, as a pub drinker with a scathing wit; and Valerie O'Connor, who plays an RTé reporter with whom Hawks has a romance. Not so Irish however are some of the film's interiors and exteriors which had to be shot in the UK to keep costs down. "It's a shame really but because of the exchange rate on the euro, we had to do all the interiors in England. But we are coming over to Ireland to shoot the rest next month," says Hawks.

By keeping costs down the film-makers didn't have to resort to seeking American backers for their film."We did originally have interest from America, and the studio wanted Brendan Fraser, the actor from The Mummy, in my role. But the moment you put an American on the side of the road, it's a totally different film. We wanted to remain faithful to what happened. It's a crazy enough story already."

The film is due out later this year.