Gloomy? Not on your Nellie!

There's scarcely a trace of Scouse about the former Nellie Boswell as she goes into a reverie about Bradford and its environs.

"Those houses, that terrain - oh, come on!" she effuses. "I love it, love it."

Her delirium has been brought on by the news that her new stage production, a double-bill of comedies by Tom Stoppard and Peter Shaffer, has been booked to play the Alhambra Theatre.

But Bradford seems like a dream to her now, as we sit in a dishevelled and unfriendly rehearsal room, a stone's throw from Waterloo Station. "I can't wait to get up there, can't wait," she says. "It's a marvellously exciting and fruitful literary experience for me, every time I go."

If Bradford needs an ambassador for its bid to become the European Capital of Culture in 2008 (no sniggering at the back, please), here she is.

"I make an annual pilgrimage to Haworth and to the Hockney museum in Saltaire," she says. "I love the moors especially."

The former star of Bread and Boys From the Blackstuff goes into yet more raptures about "that big cinema thing" in the city centre (she's referring to the Imax auditorium, not the Odeon) and about the Alhambra itself.

But her principal source of artistic enlightenment is the Bronte Parsonage museum.

"I can never quite get over the fact that the dresses were so tiny. The sisters must have been so small yet they created so much. Haworth keeps me in mind of that."

Her love of Yorkshire may stem from the fact that though her background is as Scouse as Mrs Boswell's (she's from the more refined quarter of Bebington, Cheshire) she can trace her roots right back here. Her great-grandmother, one of six daughters, lived in a vicarage just outside Leeds.

"Very religious family, they were, and highly educated. But keeping six daughters was a problem in Victorian times.

"Then my great grandfather arrived from Ireland: he was a bricklayer, highly paid but totally illiterate.

"He stayed with the family at the vicarage and he was given his choice of the daughters in return for keeping the rest of the family. He chose my great grandmother.

"And he never learned to read or write. She tried to teach him and one day he made the strange sound of a word he was trying to read, then he just closed the book - he was so proud.

"But with all those mills going up, you see, bricklayers were the most prized people in the country. Whereas my great grandmother, for all her education, was considered useless. Education was irrelevant. If you could read and write a bit, it was all that mattered."

Miss Boht's train of thought remains in Yorkshire but turns to the more recent past as she recalls the last time she played the Alhambra.

"I was up doing a tour of Alan Bennett's monologues, which Alan directed. Very peculiar playing a monologue in such a big theatre. We were like mice."

Bennett is a friend, as are many other creative types in the little Dales media enclave centred on Settle.

"There's quite a showbusiness clique up there. Most of them turn up in Last of the Summer Wine. The rest are writers."

She has, she says a penchant for writers (though she has long been married to a musician, the composer Carl Davis) and proceeds to reel off a series of anecdotes about others she has known.

"I was in a play years ago, and it wasn't long enough - so they sent the writer off to do an extra scene as a curtain raiser. He wrote it in 15 minutes flat, on the train. And the next day at rehearsals, we were all asking him the most intense questions, and he finally gritted his teeth and said, 'Don't ask me again what this play's about because I just don't know'."

Her current role in The Real Inspector Hound, Tom Stoppard's half of the double-bill, sees her as a doddery actress finally given her big break.

To do justice to the part, Miss Boht, who at 63 is not in the least bit doddery, had to recall a particular style of old-school acting.

"I shouldn't say this, but if you go and see the Mousetrap, you'll see the same style. You just stand still and say the lines.

"In the case of my character, she's memorised the entire script, including the stage directions. And she delivers them as if they were a big important part of the speech. 'Interior, half an hour later'.

"I've given her a Scottish accent because she's been told she has to have one - but the accent keeps slipping; she's really not very good at it."

We part company with Miss Boht still daydreaming of Yorkshire, and of writers.

"You're a writer, aren't you?" she asks me. "That's good. Actors are desperate for writers.

"And you live in Yorkshire, too - so you've got that wonderful scenery to look at."

l The Real Inspector Hound and Black Comedy: A Double Bill, also starring Sara Crowe, will be at the Alhambra, Bradford, from September 14-18. Tickets are bookable on 01274 752000.

DAVID BEHRENS

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