SHERRY Baines owes her current stage appearance in York to someone she's never met having chickenpox ten years ago.

That's when she first met the Theatre Royal's artistic director Damien Cruden. Now he's directing the Yorkshire-born actress in Terry Johnson's comedy Dead Funny.

Back in 1992, John Godber's play Shakers was on tour, directed by Cruden, and about to open at Newcastle Playhouse when one of the female cast of four fell ill with chickenpox.

"They rang me and asked if I would step in," recalls Baines. "I'd already played two of the four parts, but this was another one. I had two days notice to get to Newcastle, where Damien and the rest of the cast were waiting. He rehearsed me and I went on with the book on the first night. I ended up doing the whole week in Newcastle."

She wrote to Cruden when he took over at York Theatre Royal, asking "do you remember me?" and was rewarded with roles in Man Of The Moment and The Odd Couple.

Now, in Dead Funny, she plays the wife of a husband more interested in membership of the Dead Funny Society, celebrating the talents of Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd, than having sex with her. As her biological clock is ticking away, she's desperate for a night of passion. Unfortunately it coincides with the society's event to mourn the passing of Benny Hill.

In real life, Baines is no great fan of those comedians either. "I hated Tommy Cooper when I was a child. I couldn't understand why he didn't get the tricks right and didn't speak properly," she admits. "And Benny Hill, I wasn't a fan at all. I did love Morecambe and Wise though".

She and John Banks, who plays her husband, haven't worked together before but do both come from Yorkshire - her from Bradford, him from Doncaster.

Both have worked for Cruden in York before and she sees this as part of what he likes to do. "It does make the audience feel it's their theatre because they recognise the actors. It helps them identify it as their theatre," she says.

Her interest in the stage was fostered by her mother's involvement with local amateur dramatic societies. She remembers going to the Saturday matinees at the Alhambra in Bradford to see shows. "I fell in the love with the theatre," she says.

Her first time on stage was in The Sound Of Music as Marta, the second youngest of the Von Trapp children.

She didn't decide on an acting career at once, studying English and drama at Hull University, followed by a year's teacher training. She knew she didn't want to teach and "still trying to be sensible" became a journalist in West Yorkshire.

Appearing with the National Student Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe alongside John Godber, still a teacher himself at the time, provided her entry into professional acting.

"I'd been a journalist for 18 months when someone dropped out of a production of Shakers he was doing at Hull Truck. He didn't have time to re-advertise, so he asked a few people he knew. I was one of them," she explains.

"He phoned me one evening, I auditioned the next day in Hull after ringing in sick to the newspaper and started rehearsing that afternoon. The next day I went into work and handed in my notice. I worked on the paper by day and rehearsed in the evening."

Baines felt she'd tried "a proper career" but fate had intervened and acting "found me". So she continued acting after appearing in that first-ever production of Shakers.

So does she consider herself a Yorkshire actress?. "It's always nice to use your own accent but I don't just want to be pigeonholed. I'm always quite pleased when I'm not cast as Yorkshire," she says.

That wasn't the case when she was asked to do a voiceover as Cherie Blair. "I was Christmas shopping when my agent called. I said I would have a go at the voice but we never hear her speak, she just smiles a lot," she says.

* Dead Funny: York Theatre Royal until April 27. Box office (01904) 623568