Lynda Bellingham: An ageless appeal

She's a regular on Loose Women, a hit in Celebrity Come Dancing and was Helen Herriott in All Creatures Great and Small. Now Lynda Bellingham is returning to Yorkshire to play the role of Chris Harper – based on the real-life calendar girl Tricia Stewart of the Rylstone Women's Institute.

Lynda has met Tricia, the driving force behind the scheme to raise funds for cancer charities which resulted in the celebrated nude calendar and she found her inspirational. "She's got so much drive and energy and her book and her diaries were fascinating and hugely informative when we started rehearsals.

"I'd seen the film but when I was offered the part, I decided that I didn't go back and re-watch it, purely because I wanted to offer my interpretation of the part, rather than be influenced by Helen Mirren's.

"Actually, it's the third time I've played Chris. The first was when the play premiered, then I did a run in the West End, and now I'm back with a further three months. I love it and I never tire of it. I never even think of the nudity now, it's so beautifully choreographed that no-one in the audience ever sees anything at all – although they may think that they do.

"Whenever we have new members of the cast joining us, the first thing that they worry about is the stripping-off bit. But I put them at ease by telling them that it is strangely liberating. And when they get to do it, they find that I am absolutely right."

Lynda is also remembered as the tasty Oxo mum in the TV adverts. And why not once again, asks Lynda who is 62 in May. "It is high time we saw older women in adverts. The only ones of any age that you see these days are generally going on about denture cream. What's wrong with a granny praising gravy? The so-called 'grey pound' has an awful lot of influence out there.

"Why not an Oxo gran instead of an Oxo mum? If they ever wanted to ask me. I'd be there in a flash. For a long time, I thought that doing those Oxo slots was a bit of a millstone around my neck, because I was so strongly associated with them that hardly anyone would give me any other work. There's a terrific snobbery about doing ads for TV, or there was back then.

"No-one from the RSC or the National Theatre would look at you. And other TV producers were very wary as well. Work did dry up for quite a long while – and it wasn't made any easier because roles for women of 'that certain age' tend to start drying up when you get to 40. That's why I'm so proud and delighted to be involved with two female-orientated successes, Loose Women and Calendar Girls.

Lynda's mother Ruth was a long-term member of the local Women's Institute. "She thought the social life was wonderful. Sadly, she died six years ago of Alzheimer's. She suffered from that terrible disease for several years. My dad Donald, who had been a BOAC pilot, died only a couple of weeks before and despite her condition, I think that she somehow knew that he'd gone. He was 82, she was 80. He had been her principal carer for all those years, and I think that he was, like so many people in that position, just completely worn out.

"You may say 'Well, that's a pretty good innings', and that's true, but when Alzheimer's snatches everything away from you and your husband, or wife, or a daughter, or a son, or whoever it may be, is your carer, it is terribly sad. Which is why I fight all the time for more funds into researching the condition, for a better deal for carers, for more funds.

"I don't know very many people who haven't had an experience with Alzheimer's. Each of us knows somebody who has been affected. The problem has to be addressed – by whichever government we get after the election."

Lynda's autobiography, out this month, is called Lost and Found. "I've written it all myself and it is warts and all, totally and completely honest as far as the laws of libel will allow. Her first marriage lasted a year, her second, to Italian Nunzio Peluso lasted 15. She has two sons from that relationship, Michael and Robert, now in their twenties.

Michael is following in his mum's footsteps and is also in Calendar Girls cast. "That had nothing to do with me", says Lynda, "He went for the audition of his own accord and told me about it afterwards. He landed the part of the photographer and its fun to be touring with him. But we don't share the same digs, or stop at the same hotels. He has his own life to lead and if he needs accommodation, then he sorts it out himself. Mum can only do so much."

She gives her boys the occasional helping hand. "This is where the power of the grey pound comes in again. It is a terrible struggle for a lot of young people to make ends meet these days and if a mum or dad or a grandparent can help, then I think that they should. I know that my two couldn't have bought their second-hand cars without my help."

Lynda is now "very very happily" married to Michael Pattemore, a property developer based in Spain. "We got married on my birthday in May 2008, so he has absolutely no excuse for forgetting our anniversary or my birthday. I have, at long last, met the man that I should have been with years ago. He's my soul-mate, he makes me laugh, and we get on like a house on fire. In fact, I jokingly call him my toy boy because he's eight years younger than I am. He's wonderful in that he's with me so much of the time – if he has business to do, he flies out to Spain, does it, and comes back and joins me whereever I may be. That way we have things to talk about, things to share."

She says her first two marriages were 'complete disasters'. You don't want to know some of the things that went on. Abuse? Plenty of it. And when I divorced the boys' father, I vowed that I would never walk up the aisle or into a Register Office ever again. And yet…along came Michael".

Her new husband served a two-year prison sentence for fraud when he was younger. "That's behind him now, he's served his sentence and that's that. And I say in his defence that he was a very small cog in a very much larger operation. End of story."

She eplores the way that TV companies have slashed their budgets for new and original drama for the small screen. "I am saddened when I go past places like the Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds where I made so many programmes because they are now little more than empty shells. All that talent behind the cameras, all those wonderful people who were part of the bigger team. Where on earth are they now? How are they making a living?"

She won thousands of new fans when she appeared in Strictly Come Dancing (and survived four full weeks) but admits it was terrifying. "It wasn't the dancing so much as those dresses. Every week I'd have to float down the stairs, looking like a puffed-up meringue. The thing is that, as an actor, you spend your career being someone else – and in Strictly, it was me. Lynda, not a character. It's very unnerving to be yourself."

Calendar Girls is at Leeds Grand theatre March 8-13