How did the one woman show come about?

Well I’m sort of a friend of various theatres and I used to go and talk to different groups about my career.

I was at a Marie Curie event in Bath talking to people and it grew from there. My publicist decided I could do a whole evening because I’d talked for so long already about my great grandfather being one of the founders of Derby County (Football Club) and my grandfather playing for Sheffield Wednesday and I’d not even mentioned the theatre yet!

I did then of course go on to talk about Charlie Drake and Shelley and various other things. He booked some dates before I could change my mind!”

The evening is a two part one woman show, plus a questions and answers session. What is the most common question the audience asks?

“It’s often which part would you most like to play and I must come up with an answer for that!

I can never think of anything because once you’ve got too old to play Juliet and you’re not right for Macbeth, you don’t quite know what to do then!

I’ve liked my original roles. I also get asked who has been your favourite person to work with and my answer to that will always be Ronnie Barker.”

How did you first come to work with Ronnie Barker?

“They needed a girl for the sketches in Frost on Sunday as it was all live so they couldn’t do it themselves. He knew I was free on Sundays as I was working in the theatre and it went from there. We went on to do Clarence and all sorts of other things, I have a great deal to thank Ronnie for.”

Was it a conscious decision to do mainly comedy for TV and more serious parts for the stage?

“No you just seem to be typecast on TV. I started working with Charlie Drake and it was all variety from there and nothing straight. It just happened I got typed for comedy, which I loved, but I would have liked to have done some Dickens or something. I just seemed to tick a box for light entertainment!”

Do you think the quality of TV comedy is as good as when you were doing Last of the Summer Wine and then Keeping Up Appearances?

“Something happened at the BBC, they got someone new in and before long there was no more Last of the Summer Wine or Heartbeat. I think it’s a real shame, they were so clever. The trouble was it was a large cast and we were based up in Huddersfield, so they had to pay for us to stay somewhere all the time. A lot of people say they miss it enormously. With Keeping Up Appearances, Pat Routledge decided she’d had enough as she was going to do Hetty Wainthropp.

The BBC has tried to do a Christmas show, but once it stopped, that was it.

“I don’t think it’s generally as good now, but I do like Miranda. I think she’s very funny, I like her enormously. There’s a lot of stand up comedy, but I don’t stay up that late to watch them and I don’t find them terribly funny. I normally find myself switching over to Freeview and watching something like Rising Damp on BBC3.”

What other interests do you have?

“I like to go and watch cricket. I’m a member at Middlesex so I go to Lord’s, although we didn’t have much cricket there this summer because of the archery for the Olympics. I go to concerts, theatre, opera, whatever. I always keep busy. I sometimes feel a twinge of disappointment when my agent actually finds me some work!

She says I’m very good at being out of work! I live in London so there’s always something to do.”

Have you spent much time on the south coast?

“I did a season on the end of the pier in Bournemouth with Terry Scott, but otherwise not really. I’ve done Chichester of course, but I have friends in Bournemouth and Portsmouth and it will be great to see them. Holidays were spent in Derbyshire as I was growing up and I’ve done a fair bit of travelling around the UK, but you tend to only get to know a place when it’s got a theatre.”