On the loose in NY

PERHAPS it’s the name. I mean who among us can resist a female who calls herself a loose woman? The idea of four of them gathered in the same place makes it even more appealing.

Since making its debut 11 years ago ITV1’s Loose Women has established itself as a daytime chat show that everyone enjoys. It’s made the name of some of the regulars and brought others back into the spotlight.

And it’s not only a TV show these days. There’s a book and a video and, who knows, a film before very long. If those girlfriends in Sex And The City can do it, why not these British gals?

The show, for those who haven’t stumbled across it, has four women debating various subjects – men, marriage and sex figures strongly on the agenda – with brief interruptions from a couple of guests, usually plugging something.

“Some men are terrifed about coming on,” admits actress Sherrie Hewson. “Like Marco Pierre White. They’ll put their arms across them like we’re going to rip their clothes off or something.”

Today, the show boasts more than one million viewers. But it’s not without its detractors. Accused of being sexist and a case of feminism gone too far, its win in the Most Popular Factual Programme category at the National Television Awards this year prompted a particularly stinging attack with one journalist branding the Loose Women a “gaggle of sexual incontinents”.

They find the barbed comments amusing. “They (the critics) want us to hate each other, absolutely,”

says Carol McGiffin.

“I had a nose bleed once and had to leave the set,”

says Hewson. “They said I’d stormed off because Denise wouldn’t show me her Caesarean scar.”

One of the newest Loose Women is former regular on The Bill, Lisa Maxwell. “I came in quite scared as I had no idea what was required of me,”

she says. “Really, you feel like a lamb to the slaughter because these guys are old hands, but then you go to the production meeting and they’re so generous, they actually allow you to break though their chemistry.”

She was picked to join McGiffin, Welch and Hewson on a jaunt in New York for a Loose Women DVD. Following on from last year’s DVD, Late Night With The Loose Women, this one pays homage to Sex And The City, and sees the women enjoying long lunches, cocktails and uncensored chats about life, love and sex.

“Yeah, you’d have thought the producers would have been a little bit more sympathetic,” says McGiffin on discovering their champagne-fuelled chats had made it to the final cut unedited.

“It’s easy to forget you’re being filmed when there’s no audience,” says Maxwell. “And during the filming for this, we were literally sitting in the bar like any other girls on a night out.”

Hewson nods in agreement: “We just sat there as friends having a drink and that’s why it’s very free and open.”

“We’re doing all those things people want to do when they go to New York. They want to go shopping, they want to go and sit on a roof terrace and drink, everyone wants to go on a yacht up the river – and we got to do all those things.”

Ask what they think the key to the show’s success is and they’re in agreement that the familiarity factor figures high. “It’s like seeing four friends every day and if we weren’t on any more, people would actually feel they’d lost their friends,” says McGiffin.

“It would seem like bereavement to some people,”

says Hewson, nodding emphatically. The former Coronation Street actress also likens it to a soap opera: “You’ve got all the characters and maybe you don’t like one person so much as another,”

she explains.

“And that’s why it works,” adds Hewson. “Plus, it’s not ageist.”

“It celebrates older women,” says Welch. “Sometimes we can start with a really frivolous subject like sex or something and then we can have a discussion about death and bereavement,” she says.

“And it’s amazing how people react to us talking about more serious subjects. We’re not all froth.”

■ Loose Women, ITV1, weekdays. Loose Women In New York – Let Loose In The City is out now on DVD, £19.99.