Actress Anne Reid is very cagey about her role in the next Doctor Who series - and the woman who bedded the latest James Bond knows a thing to two about keeping secrets.

ANNE Reid had a secret she wasn't going to give away no matter how hard she was pressed. Tantalisingly, she took the script from her bag to show that her name was on every page so the producers would know who was responsible if an illegal photocopy surfaced. Such is the secrecy surrounding production of the next Doctor Who series for BBC1.

She ensured no one got a peek at the pages of the script. "I've signed the Official Secrets Act," she said, stashing it safely back in the bag.

All the Newcastle-born actress will reveal is that she's in the first episode of the new series. She couldn't hide that much as she was off to catch a train to Cardiff, where the series is filmed, as soon as we'd finished speaking.

"I'm not playing a Dalek," she jokes. Beyond that, she kept mum about her role, apart from saying she's thrilled to be part of the series that's been successfully revived, thanks to executive producer and writer Russell T Davies.

"My friends are very envious," says Reid. "Russell T Davies is so talented. My episode, which he's written, is the first in the new series where the new girl who replaces Billie Piper comes in."

This won't be her first appearance opposite the Time Lord, having appeared in a previous episode, The Curse Of Fenric. Sylvester McCoy was the doctor in that episode from 1989. She spent most of the time as a nurse pushing around a wheelchair containing the actor Dinsdale Landen.

"Apparently you can go to America and get paid a lot of money to talk to The Doctor Who Society. I don't remember anything about last time, but this time I'm making notes and am going to make a new career out of it," she says.

The 71-year-old actress found her career got a new lease of life after she made the movie, The Mother, in which she stripped off for sex scenes with a younger man (Daniel Craig, the new screen James Bond), collecting acclaim and awards for her brave performance.

She was no newcomer, having spent a lifetime on stage and TV, including roles as Ken Barlow's first wife Valerie in Coronation Street (she was electrocuted by a hairdryer) and in Victoria Wood's comedy Dinnerladies.

The Mother, playing a grandmother falling for her daughter's young hunky handyman, brought her much attention, although not a role in the new 007 movie Casino Royale. As a Bond girl - well she did bed Craig in The Mother - she's hoping for an invitation to the premiere. "I'd love to go," she says.

"He was lovely to work with. We're not chums, we don't go on holiday together. When we got into bed for The Mother I said 'I hope this isn't going to look like Thora Hird and Tom Cruise'. I always wanted to be a Bond girl when I was young. I wanted to come out of the sea in a bikini and have Sean Connery make love to me on the beach."

Other than that her ideal would be being offered a film or sit-com in America. She confesses that she always wanted to be in Cheers.

Not that she has time on her hands. She's been filming two screen roles - Saving Grace in Barcelona with US actress Julianne Moore and she has a small part in Hot Fuzz, the follow-up to Shaun Of The Dead from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

She's also back in the third and probably final series of ITV1's Life Begins with Caroline Quentin and Alexander Armstrong when it returns next month. The drama from Cold Feet writer Mike Bullen features Reid as Quentin's mother, coming to terms with the onset of her husband's Alzheimers.

In one episode she has a scene in the bath, for which she wore a body stocking. "No one asked me to take off my clothes when I was 20 and I wouldn't have minded," she says.

"The director says we'll protect you but you're in the bath with the crew around and feel very vulnerable. Everyone was told to give me a lot of space but, within five minutes, you have men in boots standing in the bath with you altering lights. They don't have time to worry about you sitting there."

Inevitably, the storyline causes her to reflect on getting old. Not that she wants to be 20 again, she says. "I wasn't happy. I was very unhappy in myself. I wouldn't mind looking like that now, though.

"I was unhappy with everything really - where you're going in life, worrying about keeping up with the other girls. The great thing about getting old is you don't give a damn.

"I worry about paying the gas bill but have had such a good time over the past few years."

Her roles included a Cole Porter musical on stage, something she loved but found nerve-racking. "I had to go out and sing a solo every night," she recalls. "I used to cling on to the stage manager hard every night in the wings as if I was going for an operation."

* Life Begins returns to ITV1 next month.