Shane Warne, as nearly everyone knows, is one of the greatest cricketers in history. He is also, famously, an inveterate philanderer. But a subject for a musical? Just when "Warnie" thought it was safe to go out in public again, the legendary spin bowler, who retired last year, finds himself back in the headlines. Not for his performance on the pitch, nor his indiscretions between the sheets, but as portrayed by Eddie Perfect, an award-winning Australian singer, comedian and cabaret artist.

It was Perfect who had the idea of bringing Warne's tumultuous life to the stage. He first mentioned it to his manager, Michael Lynch, as a joke. After a while, the idea didn't seem so wacky. Shane Warne: The Musical opens at the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne this week.

The show, which Perfect wrote and stars in, features 24 songs inspired by jazz and funk, soul, gospel, opera and heavy metal. "What an SMS I'm In" recalls the steamy text messages that Warne sent to various women, with one of them landing, by mistake, in the phone of his ex-wife, Simone Callahan. "Take the Pill" is a sly reference to a banned weight-loss drug that Warne claimed his mother gave him, and which earned him a one-year suspension. It is such incidents, and more – including Warne's involvement with an illegal Indian bookmaker, recounted in a Bollywood-style number – that furnish rich material for Perfect.

"Shane Warne is an amazing subject, because he has all the epic story-telling elements running through his life," Perfect told The Independent, while on the way to a final rehearsal. "There's success and failure, shame and redemption, love and loss, beautiful women and exotic locations, hair loss and giant dancing cigarettes." (Warne, whose smoking was another source of controversy during his career, once endorsed a hair-loss remedy.) Perfect adds: "There's a Truman Show quality to his life, as if he's been thrown on to the set of his own story and doesn't really know his lines."

Despite Perfect declaring that he is "fairly firmly in the Warne camp", the cricketer himself is not impressed by the prospect of Shane Warne: The Musical – not surprisingly, since he has already endured no fewer than 13 unauthorised biographies. He said recently: "I just think it shouldn't be allowed. You should have permission off anyone to write about their life – that should be the law." Warne, who took more than 1,000 international wickets during his 15-year career, said that friends had seen previews and warned him to expect "good parts and bad parts". He admitted: "I'm a pretty easy target for a few cheap jokes, but I brought some of that on myself."

Courtesy of The Independent newspaper