Alison Steadman has given us some of the nation’s best-loved comic characters, from the monstrous Beverly in Abigail’s Party to garrulous Essex housewife Pam in Gavin And Stacey.

But when she put on her wig and pinafore for her latest role, an ageing woman with early dementia in Alan Bennett’s bittersweet play, Enjoy, Alison was taken aback.

“I looked like my mother. I remembered her wearing the same clothes. It made me quite upset,” she says.

“The play was written in 1980 and that was how women in their 60s dressed back then. I’m 62 and I wear jeans and have my hair highlighted, but my mother wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing jeans. She never went out without her smart shoes and gloves.”

Enjoy, which comes to Bradford following a West End run, is set in Bennett’s native Leeds and stars Alison and David Troughton as Connie and Wilf, a couple living in the city’s last back-to-back. With demolition of the area in progress, they’re being rehoused in a maisonette, and a sociologist comes to document their life as a lasting record of a dying community.

“Alan Bennett was ahead of his time in exploring the idea of preserving a way of life by taking houses down brick-by-brick and rebuilding them as part of a museum,” says Alison. “We look back in horror at how people used to live because they didn’t have bathrooms or they used a tin bath, but that was real life for lots of people.” The play is laced with Bennett one-liners, but Alison says there’s an underlying darkness. “Mam (Connie) is grieving for her lost son and she’s stuck in an unhappy marriage. Like most married couples of their generation, they stuck it out.”

Alison is pleasant and chatty, peppering the conversation with comical observations, anecdotes and snippets of thought. “Bennett’s script is comma-perfect – you have to get it just right. Then there’s the Leeds accent. People like Mam spoke differently to how young people speak today,” she says. “Working with an Alan Bennett script is a joy, though. I don’t know any actor who doesn’t admire his work.”

Alison says her Northern roots helped her understand the rhythm of Bennett’s dialogue. Born in Liverpool, she worked in a probation office until going to drama school, where she met director Mike Leigh. The couple, married for 20 years, created some of Britain’s most memorable comedies, including Abigail’s Party, Nuts In May and Life Is Sweet.

Her best-known character is overbearing Beverly in Abigail’s Party, Leigh’s satire of 1970s suburbia. Beverly wafts around her living-room dispensing gin and tonics to the unfortunate neighbours gathered at her drinks party. Alison starred in the original play and the acclaimed 1977 TV version, and her memorable performance turned Beverly into a comedy icon.

“She’s a desperate woman,” says Alison. “She’s self-centred and materialistic, all baubles and beads, and only interested in the latest clothes and furniture. If you pick at the layers she’s hollow and selfish. You imagine she didn’t have a nurturing, loving background.”

Alison was instrumental in creating the role of Beverly and neurotic, nature-loving Candice Marie in Nuts In May, Leigh’s 1976 TV film about a tree-hugging couple on a camping trip in Dorset.

More recently she starred in Gavin And Stacey as Pam, a role written for her by the show’s creators and stars, Ruth Jones and James Corden. Some of Alison’s work has been in Yorkshire – she was in Alan Bennett’s A Private Function, filmed in Ilkley, and Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends, filmed in Leeds – and she’s keen for the region to benefit from Bradford’s City of Film status.

“It’s so much better to film in the place where something is set, rather than trying to make a piece of London look like Bradford,” she says.

“The Bradford area has a lot to offer film-makers. There are benefits for businesses when a film crew comes to town and, in cases of a high-profile production, the region benefits from tourism.”

She’s planning her own spin-off benefits for Bradford’s economy. “I was at the Alhambra in the Eighties. I remember a lovely fish and chip shop nearby – I wonder if it’s still there?” she says. I mention a curry restaurant that’s a favourite with actors at the theatre.

“Stop it, I’m just about to go on stage and you’re making me hungry,” she says, breaking into one of the nation’s best-known cackles. Enjoy runs at the Alhambra from April 19 to 24. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.