DORIAN Green, the Chigwell man-eater, wants to play Chekhov. I almost burst out laughing when Lesley Joseph, the actress who played Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson's tarty Jewish neighbour in the long-running sitcom Birds of a Feathers, tells me of her ambitions.

There's no reason I should find this funny. After all, there are thousands of actresses who long to be taken seriously in something Russian and gloomy.

I have made the classic mistake of confusing the actress with the character. But she played the character for so long and so convincingly it's not surprising that Lesley Joseph and Dorian Green have now become one and the same to most TV viewers.

Joseph, whose big-haired, mini-skirted, scarlet finger-nailed image is now emblazoned on the public consciousness, left Dorian behind her more than two-and-a-half years ago.

Since then, she has been playing Miss Hannigan, the drunken, tyrannical orphanage owner who cruelly mistreats our curly-haired heroine in Annie.

A monster of a more extreme kind, perhaps, but isn't Miss Hannigan just an extension of the frequently vicious and spiteful Dorian?

"I don't think Miss Hannigan and Dorian are really the same sort of character.

I think people are quite surprised when they come and see this and see how far it is from Dorian," says Joseph, sounding slightly breathless, having just catapulted off stage in the middle of a matinee performance.

"She's the most blatantly nasty character I've played. Dorian wasn't nasty, but she could be a bit of a bitch.

"Having said that, they are both fairly vulnerable. But I think playing nasty is fun. Look at JR - he was the most popular character in Dallas. It's good to have a really meaty role like that."

After such a long time in the musical, Joseph is not looking forward to the end of its run, now just four weeks away.

"It's a great show. The audience reaction is fantastic. I would be quite happy to carry on doing this forever.

"It will be quite a big wrench when it finishes. Some of us have been with it from the word go. You become a family when you work on a touring show, much more than when you're on TV. There will be a bit of a pit in my stomach."

After Annie, it will be straight into panto for Joseph, followed by...well, nothing, at the moment.

"I went straight into this after Dorian. This has been two-and-a-half years, so I haven't been free to do anything else since I finished Dorian.

"That's been a slight problem, because things have come up. On the other hand, I had to go back on stage. I love being on stage. I don't ever want to do one thing to the exclusion of another."

She admits she owes Dorian a "huge amount".

"She was the thing that put me on the map. We did 102 episodes and she's become a national institution."

She is relaxed about the future, as she can probably afford to be. But she still has some ambitions.

"I'd like to go back on TV. I'm also really enjoying being back on stage, so some Shakespeare of Chekhov would be nice."

Dorian in The Seagull? It might yet happen.

Annie is at The Mayflower, Southampton from November 28 to December 9. Tickets cost from £14.50. For bookings and information, call the Mayflower box office on 023 8071 1811.