'I was so much happier being Bet'

''There's got to be a bit of leopard somewhere,'' she winks, a broad smile appearing as she sits down to discuss her years as Coronation Street's brassy barmaid Bet Lynch and her even more sizzling life off-screen.

Apart from several fleeting appearances, it's more than 11 years since she pulled her last pint at the Rovers Return as landlady Bet Lynch.

Today, the 64-year-old grandmother-of-three looks fit and happy. She's dressed in a smart black trouser suit and a tight white shirt outlines her best assets, which she points out were known on the Corrie set as Newton and Ridley.

Her hair is still unbelievably blonde but in a style that's more Gloria Hunniford than beehive Bet. But the Lancashire accent is unmistakable and so is the humour.

Since leaving the Street her TV appearances have been sparse: Celebrity Fit Club, guesting on Hollyoaks and a chat show which never got off the ground. There's been the panto circuit and the odd tour in theatre productions but nothing as high profile as her Corrie days.

She may have been 'resting' in acting terms, but as a result has found time to write her autobiography, Just Julie. She's also kept busy with the 27-acre farm she bought 11 years ago in Heywood, now an animal sanctuary for stray and injured animals that she shares with her 37-year-old toyboy Scott Brand, a trucker nearly 30 years her junior.

''We've been together ten years - I should be up for a lifetime achievement award,'' she jokes. ''He's 6ft 4in and daft as a brush, but then he'd have to be to put up with me.''

People may scoff, but Julie's love life is probably the most stable it has ever been.

She has had relationships with both men and women, although she doesn't like to be called bisexual (she refers to her affairs with women as 'same sex' relationships).

Each of her three marriages ended in divorce - indeed, her second marriage to accountant Tony Rudman didn't survive the wedding day, as he decamped to his mother's before the reception - and one of her same-sex relationships ended when the woman walked out when she discovered Julie had cervical cancer.

The disastrous second marriage was the catalyst for a nervous breakdown, she recalls. Julie returned to work after her brand-new husband left, keeping his departure secret, but the stress took its toll.

''A lot of the time I was so much happier being Bet. It was easier because of the amount of pain that Julie was going through. It was a blessed relief to be able to put the slap on and turn into somebody else. Psychologically that helped me so much.

''But in my dressing room when I took Bet's beehive off and my make-up off at the end of a 12-hour day, hell would start kicking in.''

Julie finally had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental institution for about a month.

''You lose track of time when you're in places like that. I thought I was fine. I had a full-length evening dress on but then it was like a stately home to me so I thought I'd dress for the occasion. Everybody else was mad.''

It was all pretty disturbing stuff for a working class girl from Heywood, Lancashire, who was brought up by her mother, Alice, and publican stepfather, Bill Goodyear.

Julie found herself pregnant at 17 with her only son, Gary, from her first shortlived marriage. She scrimped and saved to attend the Manchester branch of the Lucie Clayton finishing school, then started modelling, which led to small jobs as an extra in some Granada shows and later to Coronation Street.

As her status on Coronation Street grew, so did allegations of diva-like behaviour. She's quick to brush the claims aside today.

''I remember reading 'Her PA is always expected to light her cigarette' and 'She demands pink champagne'. What utter rubbish! I light my own cigarettes,'' she grins, taking another one out of the packet with her long plum-coloured nails.

But press her as to who she keeps in touch with from the Street and she's cagey. Yes, Roy Barraclough (who played Alec Gilroy) came to her book launch, as did Bill Tarmey (Jack Duckworth) but she doesn't mention anyone else.

The book has been a tough call for Julie because she doesn't like looking back, she says. ''I don't live in the past. I'm very much a woman of now and tomorrow.''

This may have something to do with the fact that, at 36, she was told she had cervical cancer which had spread to the womb. Julie had a hysterectomy but even then doctors told her she might only have a year to live. Being given such frightening news changed her attitude, she says.

''Life becomes very precious when you've been given that length of time.''

Work once again proved to be her salvation.

''Because I had got work and because I didn't have the time to dwell on it, it made me behave more positively mentally.''

In her early days on the set among the likes of Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker, Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner) and Violet Carson (Ena Sharples), she had to tread carefully.

''It was not the done thing to be familiar with others. It was all 'Miss Carson' and 'Miss Speed' and all that. Respect was expected and respect was given. We live in changing times.''

After 25 years she'd had enough - but four years later she was back for a planned 12-month return, only to find Corrie a very different place to work, with, she says, no team spirit or camaraderie, and a gruelling five-episodes-a-week schedule.

Constantly changing scripts and the last-minute switches for filming particular scenes left Julie chasing her tail.

''In the end, I didn't know what day it was, what page I was supposed to be on or what scene it was. I didn't know what clothes I was supposed to be wearing and there was nobody there to help me. With the best will in the world, I found it impossible to work like that.

''I've got tremendous admiration for the actors, the writers and everybody who works on it because that's a killer of a schedule. I couldn't do it. I went back, I tried and I couldn't do it. Frustrated? That would be putting it mildly. I was devastated. I was heartbroken.''

Close to another breakdown, she quit after a few weeks.

''I stayed at home. I was too ill to be able to do anything else. I was in shock a lot of the time. Reading what the media had made of that - their interpretation that I couldn't hack it or that my work was bad - hurt.''

It's likely that her longevity as Bet Lynch has limited the roles she has been offered subsequently, but Julie says she has no regrets.

She's turned down offers to appear on Big Brother - ''Who wants to be locked in a room with all those cameras?'' - and refuses to go on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! because they don't have smoking flights to Australia.

''Would I eat a kangaroo's testicle?'' she muses. ''Only if I'd been introduced first.''

* Just Julie, by Julie Goodyear (Macmillan, £18.99).