Filmed entirely in North Yorkshire, Manfield Park arrives on ITV1 screens with a well-known cast led by Doctor Who favourite Billie Piper. She reveals to Steve Pratt that corsets aren't all they're cracked up to be.

FORMER Doctor Who assistant Billie Piper is talking about corset fatigue. "The novelty of having a tiny waist and great breasts wears off after a while," she says. "It's not the most comfortable get-up in the world but it looks lovely and feels quite special wearing all of those clothes."

She's not moaning and, besides she's right, it does look good as viewers of Mansfield Park, the first in ITV1's Jane Austen season will see on Sunday.

Piper, fresh from time travelling as Rose Tyler with the Time Lord on BBC1, is clever casting. She's a youthful face the makers hope will help attract a younger audience to the Austen season which aims to prove her books don't have to be stuffy period pieces.

The actress wasn't a fan of the author beforehand and had been seen in the past as an unlikely candidate for an Austen heroine. "I remember auditioning for period things at school and people would say, 'she doesn't have a period face'. I was getting really frustrated because that's not the point," she says.

She's proving them wrong with a hat-trick of corset roles. Before filming Mansfield Park at Newby Hall, near Ripon, she played Sally Lockhart in two BBC adaptations from Philip Pullman novels, The Ruby In The Smoke and The Shadow In The North."It's such a privilege to play a part in an Austen tale. My gran couldn't be happier. She almost cried when I told her. She said it was brilliant news.

{AND Fanny is such a wonderful part. She's a wholesome woman, her heart is in the right place and she's incredibly compassionate. It makes you feel healthy playing the part."

Only 24, Piper's life was as a pop star and Mrs Chris Evans before Doctor Who established her acting credentials. As far as she's concerned, she jumped spaceship - the Tardis - at the right time with corset roles welcome as something quite different.

"I did want to do something quite far removed from Doctor Who and I want to continue to do that if I get the chance because it's good to keep challenging your ideas, otherwise you can get quite complacent and stale," she says.

"I don't really want to experience that because I love acting so much. I just want to have a crack at everything."

She was happy with Mansfield Park because the director wanted to make it feel very fresh and young. He uses handheld camera to make it seem like you're spying on the family. "That's what I love about it," she says.

"He didn't like us going back to the book too much. He was really open, we'd all sit down and work it out together. I wanted Fanny to be quite clumsy and quite messy, and to trip up on her petticoats. That's part of her nature, she's quite a free spirit."

The production required two very different skills from her - riding and dancing. She had little chance to practise riding side-saddle before filming but admits a great deal of riding wasn't required. Her stunt double did most of the fast stuff.

Even talking about the dancing sends her hysterical. "It makes me laugh because it goes on for so long," she says. "It's a big group dance so it's like a domino effect, if one of you puts a foot out of place, everyone falls about and loses it.

"It's really funny watching the boys dance. In the nicest way possible, they don't all have natural rhythm. So it's quite funny watching someone do the hornpipe and getting quite frustrated when they can't. But you're spinning around and around - they used to do that to make themselves dizzy and excitable."

She feels she left Doctor Who in search of a fresh challenge at the right time. "You know when it's time to move on. I certainly do," she says.

"Two years in Cardiff, where it's filmed, is quite a long time, and I wanted to get back to London and have a crack at other things. I'm quite enjoying being on jobs for three months and then moving on. That kind of works for me."

As one of the biggest names in the cast, she's a selling point of the Austen season but she tries to ignore the pressure and not to listen to any of the hype "because it can stifle you as a human being and performer".

AFEW years ago she couldn't have imagined being offered the lead in a period drama. "I never saw this happening at all, which is great," she says. "I don't like to plan ahead, to think about three years in the future. I only think about day to day, which again is quite liberating.

"Life changes so much all the time. That's something I've learnt. I don't want to be aiming for something three years down the line. I just want to be mostly happy, and work as an actress and continue to get jobs."

When ITV launched the Austen season, Piper was making her stage debut in London's West End and avoiding questions about her relationship with co-star Laurence Fox, from TV's Lewis series.

Theatre is "really hard" and that the level of concentration "is killing me", she says. "I'm still trying to find my feet. You get up and the first thing you think about is the play, but you still have seven hours before you do it.

"I'm still very green, this is my first theatre production. I feel I'm learning a lot more about being an actress on stage than if I'd stuck to TV. You have to concentrate all of five minutes when you do TV. I'm not saying it doesn't mean as much. In the theatre, you are working for two hours and you're drained."

* Mansfield Park is on ITV1 on Sunday at 9pm. The Jane Austen season also features Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Emma

* ITV3 is planning to show Jane Austen Season... Behind The Scenes as a one-hour documentary which will feature Newby Hall, the amazing country house in North Yorkshire that became, for four weeks, the Regency period mansion required for Mansfield Park. As well as a Billie Piper interview there's conversations with Persuasion stars Antony Head, Julia Davis and Rupert Penry-Jones and Northanger Abbey cast members J J Field and Carey Mulliga