No whip, but great heels...

FORMER Emmerdale actress and You've Been Framed presenter Lisa Riley hopes her latest TV drama role will banish people's preconceptions of her once and for all.

Her character Rebecca was introduced in the second series of Kay Mellor's drama Fat Friends and re-appears in the third. She's no longer the shy girl viewers first met.

"My storyline this time is fantastic. It's about loss. I lose my father and my virginity. I spent two days in bed with nothing on but a pair of stockings," says Riley, who played Emmerdale's Mandy Dingle for four years.

"My worry was being seen as the comedy girl. You can get pigeonholed. I knew it was going to be hard to convince people, but feel I broke down a lot of barriers with my performance. I wanted to prove I could do it. Now I'm concentrating on my acting."

She has been combining the final stages of filming Fat Friends 3 in Leeds, while rehearsals for her starring role in this year's pantomime at Darlington Civic Theatre. She plays the Ringmistress ("no whip, but great heels," she grins) in Goldilocks And The Three Bears.

The show reunites her with father and son comedy double act Clive Webb and Danny Adams, playing circus clowns Bozo and Billy. This is their fourth year working together - and it shows in the way they laugh and joke with, and about, each other during a break from rehearsals.

"There's been problems with this one because Lisa wanted to play Goldilocks and they realised she would have eaten all the porridge," jokes Webb, who was one of TV's Tiswas team.

The three first came together in Dick Whittington, then Aladdin and, last year, in Goldilocks. And they'll stay together off stage, sharing a house during the seven-week run.

All three began performing when they were young. Riley's first job was in a Colgate toothpaste advertisement when she was nine. She was a member of Oldham Workshop Theatre when an advertising agency came looking "for a cute kid" for the ad.

"My mum always said I was different," says Riley. "When my peer group were watching Dangermouse, I was watching Audrey Hepburn. My mum is a real extrovert, the life and soul of the party. I've inherited that from her."

Adams was even younger when he first went to the theatre. At the age of three weeks, he was taken to The Leo Sayer Show at Blackpool Opera House, where his father was appearing.

He can remember as a youngster thinking that he'd like to follow in his father's footsteps. "I know I was going to be a comedian from the day I was born because my dad looked at me and said, 'is this a joke?'," he says. "The first time I went on stage was when I was three, in panto."

Webb would have liked to use him in his stage act - "I wanted to juggle with him as a baby".

Webb himself began in show business as a drummer with a pop group, then joined the circus and emerged as head clown after seven years. He formed a comedy band, The North Stars, that won Opportunity Knocks and was a magician for a time.

Because they're used to working with each other, they can accommodate topical jokes into the script. Best of all, says Riley, the audience loves to see them "corpse" or become helpless with laughter at the jokes. She knows this wouldn't be acceptable in straight theatre, but points out: "We're not doing Brecht".

What she will be doing is performing as one of ABBA in a special episode of Fat Friends being shown over the New Year.

Before that she has to survive the thrills, spills and laughs of the Goldilocks circus. Most dangerous, it seems, is Webb's aim when it comes to slapstick. "I'm deadly accurate with a custard pie and squirting water to within point three of a millimetre," he claims.

I don't think I'll ask him to prove it.

* Goldilocks And The Three Bears is at Darlington Civic Theatre from December 4 to January 18. Tickets 01325 486555.