When Viv Hardwick met Gaby Roslin, the TV presenter and actress, she launched into another defence of her acting ability and explained about playing the famous fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally at Newcastle next week.

PERHAPS TV presenter-turned actor Gaby Roslin is too used to the world of the autocue because her interview response script never varies. Just like last year's tour of the comedy Dinner, exactly the same comments start appearing in my notepad regarding journalists pigeon-holing her as a TV celeb rather than a serious actress, even though that question was never asked.

You're soon acutely aware maritally separated Roslin is not going to discuss her private life; regards her future plans as almost out of bounds and greets anything mildly controversial with a sharp "I can't go into that". All this puts her almost side-by-side with a certain Meg Ryan facing poor Michael Parkinson.

Funny then, that the role she's about to bring to Newcastle is the feisty female half of When Harry Met Sally and THAT fake orgasm scene in the restaurant made famous on film in 1989 by Ryan.

So orgasms are on the agenda but everything else is on somewhat shakier ground. Roslin even denies continuing to appear as a presenter on TV at one point arguing that "I now do daytime TV, I don't do primetime any more" which would leave any interviewer groping.

She does regard a TV drama as the next goal - "a Miss Marple or an Inspector Lynley" - when the tour closes at Tyneside next week. But she has a couple of projects she can't discuss and is busy completing a C4 series called Life Begins Again, about 30 people who change their lives.

The see-saw nature of our chat means that Roslin is proud of the show being more than a straight presenting job or voice-over.

"We've been following people who decide to change their lives like a banker to bee-keeper, although we don't actually do that. I think it will go out in January next year so it's a long project. I actually sit down and discuss things with our subjects."

But she responds to the thought that this must be challenging with: "No, it's not challenging for me, I just go along and talk to them. This is very much a documentary that I step in and out of. To be honest everything is going well, touch wood... so I can't really answer your question."

Oh let's get back to Sally's fake orgasms at the rate of eight a week. "I've loved it," she laughs, "I've loved it all, the fake orgasms, the play, being Sally and working with Johnny Wrather (the ex-Corrie star who plays Harry). I think that getting a round of applause for faking an orgasm is great fun." And she reveals that her co-star and dresser give her marks out of ten each night for this first half pretend sexual frenzy.

Currently her head is full of touring theatre and the fun of having four-year-old daughter Libbi-Jack with her as they zoom between Norwich, Glasgow and Brighton in successive weeks.

"She says 'mummy stop being American' when I try out the accent on her while reading her a story and she calls my play Harry McSally," jokes Roslin.

The West End version of When Harry Met Sally fell to Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan with Roslin netting the tour after playing Mama Morton in Chicago and the tour of Dinner. For those who missed out on the Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan original, the plot centres on two New Yorkers who spend 12 years amusingly fretting over whether friends can be lovers.

Roslin says: "I've got this iconic role from an iconic film. I had to think long and hard about it before I took the part because not only do I have to shift people's preconceived ideas of Meg Ryan and Gaby Roslin the presenter, but I have to show them that I've been working as an actor for three years."

On Sally's dilemma about being friends with a man, without sex getting in the way, Roslin is on record as saying: "I have a number of male friends and we haven't had sex. I'm not planning to have sex with them and I'm not going to have sex with them. So I do believe that men and women can be friends, absolutely."

But that friendship may not extend to theatre critics of any gender. "If one more person tells me 'congratulations you've had rave reviews from the critics' I will tell them to shut up because I don't want to know," says the 43-year-old blonde who claims she never reads a word written about her... good, bad or orgasmic.

* When Harry Met Sally runs at Newcastle's Theatre Royal next week, Monday-Saturday. Box Office: 0870 905 5060.

Published: 21/07/2005