IT IS 25 years since Susan Jameson captured the nation's heart as virtuous Jessie Seaton in When The Boat Comes in, but it was also her last well-known television role for a reason.

She had earlier fallen in love with her co-star James Bolam when they starred together in the Newcastle-based sitcom The Likely Lads, and by the filming of the last series the couple had a baby daughter, Lucy.

For Susan the strain of trying to bring up Lucy and spending months in the North-East filming finally told and she decided to put her career on hold to concentrate on being a mother. "When we had Lucy, I didn't really want to be away from home that much," she says. "So I took myself slightly out of the picture. Now she is grown-up and on her way, so it is good to be back.''

Now 24, Lucy has decided that acting wasn't for her and is an assistant director on a touring production of HMS Pinafore. "She wants to make it on her own, so she is Lucy Jameson, not Bolam, which is the more famous name," says her mother.

Jameson has now teamed up with her off-screen partner to star in Close And True, although she points out they are rarely in the same scene together. ''We do meet up at one point,'' she explains. ''But it was good to go to work together and I got the chance to take the mickey out of him publicly. I roll my eyes at his acting, that's quite satisfying. Then we get home and he makes the tea. I'm in charge though.''

She admits the couple have a warm loving relationship and points out that she is an expert at keeping Bolam's feet firmly on the ground despite the recent upsurge in his career. ''He has taken off again in rather an annoying way,'' she smiles, referring to Bolam's success in the film It Was An Accident, The Midsomer Murders and Dirty Tricks with Martin Clunes.

Less happily, he also recently starred in the ill-fated sitcom set in a car park, Pay And Display, which Jameson claims was a major disappointment for the star, who is still best known for his role as Terry in TV's The Likely Lads and the follow-up, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. ''Pay And Display was intended to be on after the watershed but it was re-written and emasculated so it could go in an earlier slot,'' she says. "It deserved better than that and I know Jim was disappointed for the writer and the other actors. But all you can do is write it off and hope for something better.

''Since then he has done a monologue in which he plays a train driver and he actually got to drive a Central Line train with people on it. I was appalled,'' she says, in mock outrage.

In Close And True, the 56-year-old plays legal secretary Sally Anne Mae to Robson Green's Newcastle-based solicitor. ''She looks after him, almost like a parental thing,'' explains Jameson. ''She is a rather sour, sad, disillusioned woman at the beginning. She is quite vile though there is a glimmer of a heart of something approaching gold.

''I don't know what it says about me, I seem to be cast in a lot of awful woman parts. I play Jackie Bradley's mum in Heartbeat and she is even more vile than Sally Anne. But those roles are much more fun to play than nice people.''

Worcestershire-born Jameson made her television debut in Dixon Of Dock Green before finding fame as typist Myra Dickenson in Coronation Street in the 1960s. ''I used to love seeing Minnie, Martha and Ena in the Snug at the Rovers,'' she laughs. Then, in 1969, came the hit series Take Three Girls with Jameson, Liza Goddard and Angela Down as three young women hitting London at the height of the Swinging Sixties. They teamed up again 13 years later in Take Three Women.

They all still keep in touch and often joke about what their characters would be up to now. ''We could call it Take Three Old Fogies or Take Three Zimmers,'' she says. ''But I think we will keep it up our sleeves until we are really on our uppers.''

Despite making their home in Sussex, Jameson confesses to hankering after the North of England, especially after working in and around Newcastle for Close And True. ''I always feel happier up north, I must say. I feel at home as soon as we get past Nottingham.

"I really would like to live there again,'' she says. ''Who knows, if Close and True comes back, we will both be spending a lot more time there.''

l Close And True is on ITV on Thursdays at 9p