I'm a big fan of theatre. Not the West End Lloyd-Webber musicals that people think a key part of the London experience, but plays, whether it's the comedies of writers like Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde or Ray Cooney, the comic dramas of Alan Ayckbourn and John Godber or classic works by writers like Shakespeare, Beckett or Sheridan. I've even written one play myself. I travel for theatre too: although we live within an hour's drive of more than two dozen venues, we will sometimes venture further afield for something we really want to see. After all, a couple of tickets for an amateur performance and an overnight stop at a budget hotel doesn't cost any more than two tickets at a regional theatre - and spending two nights in Liverpool to see Graham Linehan's adaptation of The Ladykillers was miles cheaper than venturing into London when it transferred to the West End - even without the accommodation costs that would have entailed.

When at the theatre, of course, we spend a little on drinks - and we make a point of buying a programme for our sizeable collection. Contrary to what I heard in one theatre a few weeks back, a programme isn't just paying a fiver for a load of adverts: the programme at the Stephen Joseph for our Ayckbourn day, for example, cost £3.50, covered all of the day's plays and was packed with articles about the writing, the biographies of the actors - all good stuff whilst you're waiting for the performance to begin.

Something that seems to be turning up in programmes a lot lately, however, is an advert for a campaign called "My Theatre Matters." Theatres up and down the country are telling us that government are threatening their funding. One theatre even claimed that ticket prices would have to more than double for them to break even if the funding were not retained. Now, set aside the fact that theatre has long had something of a left-wing bias and is therefore no friend of the current government; ignore the fact that almost any group which receives public money will fight tooth and claw to keep every penny regardless of whether or not it's needed. Ignore even that we're living through a tough readjustment where it's finally being realised that we can't, as a country, keep spending money we don't earn. Personally, I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that one of my pleasures might be subsidised for no better reason than having an effective pressure group, so just What is the case for public funding of theatre?

The classic case, often heard from devotees of venues like the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is that it preserves and nurtures our culture for the benefit of the people, that it makes it accessible to the masses. Covent Garden, of course, spends a lot of its time on those bastions of British culture, Verdi and Wagner, and charges prices - subsidy or no subsidy - that ensure the masses get nowhere near. That's not that I'm saying there's something wrong with opera, but if you're going to play the British culture card it would have more credibility if you actually played British culture. There's more of a case to be made in the West End, perhaps, where Andrew Lloyd Webber is at least British (although a lot of people would question whether his work was culture) but I'm not sure that theatres charging £50-£75 a ticket are really struggling to cope without subsidy, much less that they can claim accessibility to justify public largesse.

So what if we look outside of London? Despite the prejudices of those within the M25 who think the rest of the country is a barren wasteland, the UK has a great deal of regional theatre and a great tradition of little theatres. From where I live in Nottinghamshire, I can reach more than two dozen theatres within an hour's drive - there are five in Nottingham alone. Regional theatre has a real claim to nurture talent. Theatres from Nottingham Arts to the Liverpool Everyman proudly display pictures of actors who rose from obscurity treading their boards. With the volume of talent emerging from these places, you'd think they'd be awash with money. But actors are a fickle bunch: offer them a choice between playing to packed houses across the UK or spending a few weeks in California making a Hollywood movie and most will leave before you can say tax exile. If they come back, more often than not it's as a piece of headline-grabbing casting in one of those West End plays at £75 a ticket. Regional theatre therefore creates these stage leviathans but receives little benefit beyond a signed photograph and with so much of their success being monetised away from these shores, the economic benefit of nurturing that talent is questionable. That's not to say that every artiste is quite so mercenary, but it's far from an uncommon trait.

The strongest argument in favour of publicly-funded theatre is that it draws money into an area. It's a reasonable surmise: there's no doubt I wouldn't spend half as much time in places like Hull, Liverpool or Derby if it weren't for their excellent theatres and I seriously doubt I'm unique in that regard. In my birth town of Chatham, Kent, the local people also recognise this and have spent years lobbying for the reopening of the long-abandoned Theatre Royal.

To explain: for various reasons, Chatham has long been in decline. After the dockyard closed in 1984, the local economy became hollowed out. Workers capable of earning reasonable salaries largely became commuters to London. Those who couldn't get a job which would justify the cost of commuting worked in the local service economy. But bad road planning and the opening of first Thurrock Lakeside and then Bluewater made Chatham's retail centres less attractive. The money earned by commuting locals was diverted out of area and the supply of jobs began to dry up. The local council hit on the idea of building a night-time economy, trying to get people to come into the town for the pubs and restaurants. But they wouldn't allow the restoration of the Theatre Royal. It couldn't, they argued, compete with the West End. The trouble is that if they don't at least try, then they have no hope at all. If you live out in the fringes of the conurbation, getting into the centre of Chatham is painful. You wouldn't do it just for a meal, but you might for a night out with theatre and a meal. Given no choice, people elect to go to London both to dine and be entertained, or even to Dartford, which seems to be able to run a major theatre despite being even closer to London than Chatham.

And that's not saying that the theatre necessarily needs to be subsidised. Much of the problem in Chatham is not that the council won't put money in, but that it won't grant permission. And if you look at that other great bastion of public entertainment, the cinema, that doesn't receive public subsidy at all.

Cinema, in fact, is an interesting comparison. As a building, its running costs are extremely similar. It is, after all, simply a stage with a box office and catering facilities. It doesn't have to pay performers night after night, but then it doesn't charge as much for its tickets as a typical regional theatre either. Films are also extremely expensive to make - the budgets of epics like Cleopatra or Titanic would dwarf the cost of a season of Alan Ayckbourn. A single big screen actor may be paid enough money to rebuild Chatham's Theatre Royal twice over - and it wasn't until the advent of home video in the late 1970s that costs could be recouped beyond the silver screens. Clearly, there must be something to be learned.

And I think some theatres are learning it. This year, the RSC is doing something unusual - a live link up. Whilst the stage in Stratford entertains an audience of over a thousand people with David Tennant's performance as Richard II, the production will be filmed and transmitted to theatres and cinemas across the country with tickets at those venues significantly cheaper than those in Stratford itself. It's something the National Theatre has been doing for a while, with some success. Why can't this be done for other productions? Ayckbourn's Arrivals and Departures will tour next year, for example, but will likely only go to a dozen venues. With modern technology, it could be made accessible to hundreds more for the cost of a cinema ticket. It would be a form of democratic subsidy.

Home video, too, might contain a key for theatre. Over the years I have seen hundreds of great theatrical productions, from the one off production of Noel Coward's Private Lives celebrating his centenary at the South Bank, to the excellent production of the Norman Conquests in Liverpool. Some, like Howard Bretton's incredible civil war play, 55 Days, will likely never be performed again. Why shouldn't I be able to give the theatre more money in exchange for a DVD or Blu-ray of the play? It's not as if it would stop me going to a future production: there is, for example, a complete BBC box set of Shakespeare's plays, but the RSC seems able to pack houses with new productions of those all the time. And stage adaptations of television programmes like Dad's Army, Inspector Morse and Columbo have played to appreciative audiences all over the country. People have an enduring fascination with seeing familiar faces in person, whether that's a stage production of Mrs Brown's Boys or Disney on Ice. An audience who bought the disc of David Tennant as Hamlet might pay good money to see Matt Smith regenerate his way into the same role. And even for those for whom the sofa is just too comfy, those who would buy the disc instead of going to see the play; even they will be putting money in to the production, much as they already do for stand-up comedians or musicians. Just ask Jimmy Carr's accountant what that means.

And theatre needs to do more to promote itself. Once a year, most theatres stage a pantomime. It's not my kind of thing, but these are so successful that over the course of a month they will make some theatres half their money. It's not simply that they're for kids or that they've got famous names off the telly, it's that they're well-promoted and people know what to expect. Andrew Lloyd-Webber has used television to his advantage too - the endless talent shows to find stars for revivals of Oliver and Sound of Music have kept his theatres busy for years. But people will enjoy more than just panto and musicals if they try. Theatre needs to shake off the idea that the rest of their offering is somehow less accessible, to grab that panto audience and show them that there's more to the stage than Widow Twankey. And the BBC could help: over the years, both the BBC and ITV have benefitted from theatre as a recruiting ground for new actors. At one point, both channels gave something back, broadcasting monthly or even weekly plays, showing audiences what theatre was all about. They should re-establish this tradition. BBC Four could even dust off the archives and show some of those older recordings, much as they did a couple of years ago with Ayckbourn's Seasons Greetings. If people could see how good theatre is, how it does something different to television, but with equal impact, they might actually go and see it.

In the end theatre isn't, or needn't be, an elite pursuit. Yes, there will be plays that challenge their audiences, but television does that too. Modern audiences can be brighter than people give them credit for. And television does it by cross-funding, using money generated by more accessible shows to fund the artier ones. Theatre should do the same, using all the trappings of modern technology to boost its audiences and open new revenue streams. Theatre does matter, but that doesn't mean it should sit on its laurels and pray for subsidy.