ESSEX girl Denise Van Outen is getting emotional. Nothing to do with her personal life and everything to do with her new one-woman play with music. She’s the co-writer and star – well, the only performer – of Some Girl I Used To Know which debuts at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, ahead of a national tour.

The show is about Stephanie Canworth, a woman who has it all – successful career, supportive husband and she’s a media darling. But, as the press release informs us, “it takes just one Facebook poke from a blastfrom- the-past and all the old memories come flooding back”. Cue a mixtape of songs from the 1980s and 1990s to accompany her trip down memory lane.

She wrote the piece with Terry Ronald, but the question that must be asked is: how much of Stephanie is Denise Van Outen? “The emotional side is definitely me and my experiences. The storyline is not, it’s completely fabricated” she says.

“I’ve spoken to lots of my friends and tried to create a character based on 90 per cent of the women of my generation. I’ve experienced the actual emotions she goes through – I’ve had my heart broken, experienced first love. I know what it feels like.”

She doesn’t believe audiences will mistake Stephanie for her. “When people come and watch, they’ll know it’s a character,” she says.

One thing will be the same – the accent. “She’s based around that area because of the accent. We’ve not been specific about where she’s from. She’s a little bit of a jetsetter. She can be from anywhere. It’s the emotion people will tap into,” she says.

There is more to Van Outen than meets the eye. She’s a presenter, who famously fronted The Big Breakfast with Johnny Vaughn. To others she’s a musical star of West End shows like Chicago, Legally Blonde and Tell Me On A Sunday. Along the way she’s done comedy (Babes In The Wood) and drama (Where The Heart Is) on TV, been runner-up on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing and currently presents a Saturday lunchtime show on Magic 105.4.

It was composer Andrew Lloyd Webber recognising her talent and putting her in a revival of his one-woman show Tell Me On A Sunday that made people sit up and take notice of her as a stage star. It was the moment, she says, that “people realised I had balls”.

She’s gone from fun-loving ladette and Essex girl to mother and musical theatre star. Her private life – she split with singer Lee Mead last year after four years of marriage – remains off limits in the interview although, like any proud mum, she happily talks about daughter Betsy.

“She’ll come with me on tour. She’s only three and only in nursery two days a week. It’s not like I have to take her out of school,” she says.

Does she know what mummy does for a living? “I think she’s figuring it out. She’s slightly aware that mummy and daddy are in TV. I did ask her what mummy does for work and she said, ‘you talk to people’,” says Van Outen.

She’s talking to me during a break in rehearsals which she admits are “a little bit more intense because it’s only me”. When it’s a one-woman show you’re always the centre of attention, but has only herself to blame.

After going solo – and loving it – with the all-singing Tell Me On A Sunday she wanted to do another one-woman show.

“I liked the idea of a relationship and talking about things women in the audience can relate to,” she explains. “I’m a big fan of Shirley Valentine, and there’s no Shirley Valentine character for this generation.

“A lot of my friends are career women, who are not so lucky in love and haven’t found the right person. I have a vivid imagination and like the idea of getting the audience to use their imagination and create through the songs and performance the characters Stephanie is speaking to.”

SHE had the initial idea two years ago, then everything was put on hold after signing up for Strictly Come Dancing, which took up six months of her life in 2012. The show progressed from notes written on pieces of paper in coffee shops through script (she needed cowriter Terry Donald to guide her, she says) to workshops and a try-out at a Leicester theatre.

The songs, chosen by Van Outen, are woven throughout the show as a soundtrack to Stephanie’s life. “It’s not like a jazz-hands type of musical.

It’s a play with music. The songs mean something to me for various reasons and fit well into the story. I’ve chosen songs I love and love to sing,” she says. “Musical theatre is what I love doing and it’s what I started doing when I was a kid. I like characters that you can create through theatre. I like the adrenalin rush and fix of being live. People say do you get bored doing the same show every night? But you don’t because the very different depending what mood the audience is in.”

The show isn’t just for women although she loves the fact that “you can have an audience of women laughing one moment and crying the next”. When she performed the show in Leicester, there were men in the audiences and they enjoyed it. “I’ve written this play mainly for women so if I have an audience that’s 70 per cent women and 30 per cent men, that was the point of doing it. A man could come and see it and enjoy it as much as a woman.”

She’s not thinking beyond the show – her first UK tour apart from the Strictly arena show – and besides doesn’t have a career plan. “It just fits in with now. I don’t think that doing something will lead to this and that.

I never really plan too far ahead.”

  • Some Girl I Used To Know: West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, Jan 30-Feb 8. Box Office 0113-2137700 and wyp.org.uk