The last time Lynda Bellingham was on the Alhambra stage the only thing she was wearing was a smile.

This time around, the popular actress is the shimmering Fairy Godmother, working her magic to get Cinders to the ball in West Yorkshire’s biggest pantomime.

This week Lynda joined Bradford panto king Billy Pearce and TV’s Coach Trip presenter Brendan Sheerin for rehearsals of Cinderella, which features a flying motorbike and a glass carriage pulled by Shetland ponies.

Lynda is, of course, much loved as TV’s Oxo Mum, but over a 40-year career on stage and screen, other high-profile roles have included Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small and Faith Grayshott in sitcoms Second Thoughts and Faith in the Future.

The Montreal-born actress got her break as a nurse in 1970s afternoon soap General Hospital. She went on to appear in many TV dramas including At Home with the Braithwaites, playing a compassionate accountant, and Bonkers, as a man-eating housewife.

In 2007 she joined ITV’s Loose Women as a panelist and in 2009 she competed on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing.

More recently she has presented ITV food series My Tasty Travels, travelling the country in a VW campervan cooking for people she meets.

“I’d love to bring the show up to Bradford,” she says. “There’s all that lovely countryside, and I love the city too. Last time I was here the Mirror Pool was in the process of being built. Now it looks wonderful.”

Lynda is delightful company, chatting away like an old friend. “I feel a bit over-dressed,” she laughs, stepping out of a glass carriage for a photo-shoot at the panto launch.

She’s relishing her role as the Fairy Godmother. “Panto has such a huge tradition at the Alhambra, it’s lovely to be part of that,” she says. “There’s a bizarre attitude in the industry towards panto and comedy, but in fact there’s an incredible amount of energy, concentration and commitment required to do it properly. Without that drive and determination you wouldn’t be able to do it. It’s a skill; you have to know how to allow for all the nuances which make it work.

“For many children it’s their first experience of theatre, and there’s no thrill quite like it. They believe all that is happening on stage and you must uphold that belief. I have to make sure they believe in the Fairy Godmother. Children live in a virtual world, through computers, a lot of the time. With panto they get to use their imaginations.”

Lynda starred in the original stage version of Calendar Girls – based on the Rylstone and District WI’s nude calendar which became a global phenomenon – and returned to it for the final tour, which was in Bradford last year.

“We got quite blase about the nude scenes but we had to remember that it was a huge thing for the WI, and it was important that their initial shyness came across,” says Lynda.

The play took £21m more at the box office than the film, starring Julie Walters and Helen Mirren.

The original 1999 calendar was aimed at raising funds for a new sofa for Airedale Hospital – and ended up raising more than £3 million for Leukaemia Research.

Cinderella runs at the Alhambra from Saturday, December 15, to Sunday, February 3. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.