BACK IN the Sixties and just off the boat from Australia, Liza Goddard was considered a sex symbol.

She was embarrassed by the label. But the image must have stuck, because when she called a producer's office recently to negotiate an older role, they laughed in her face.

"They had to phone back to ask if I was serious," she says.

She was, and next week she turns up in Bradford in the archetypal "old lady" role of Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell.

"It's not so strange," she insists. "The part was written for someone my age. But Edith Evans hijacked it."

At just a couple of years the right side of 50, her appearance in The Importance of Being Earnest completes an ageing process which has taken her from juvenile to senior citizen in a little over 30 years.

"I've grown up, that's all," she giggles.

It was as the little girl next door in the Australian children's series, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, that Liza became a household face.

By the end of the Sixties, and back home in Britain, she was swinging with the best of them as the plummy, sexy Victoria in the BBC's trendy drama series, Take Three Girls. Half the country parroted her catchphrase, "It's all too silly."

The giggly, debutante typecasting persisted through a string of Seventies sitcoms and several series of Bergerac.

But Lady Bracknell, she says, is the role she's been waiting for. "I've always told myself that one day I was going to play her. There are very few magnificent parts for women, but this is one of them."

She didn't even wait for it to be offered. "I heard from a friend that they wanted to put on the play but they couldn't find a Lady Bracknell. So I rang the production office and told them I'd always wanted to do it - and that's when they laughed at me."

The play comes to Bradford as part of a country-wide tour. "We're selling out everywhere," says Liza. "To be in a success is just the most marvellous thing in this business."

In order to put the ghost of Dame Edith Evans out of her mind, she based her characterisation on her husband's cousin, a Yorkshirewoman called Lucy Strickland.

"She lived near Malton. She was very small and quite grand, and absolutely ferocious."

Dame Edith's influence remains noticeable in the costume department. "I'm playing the part in a corset, which I have to be winched into," says Liza. "Can't eat a thing before the show, or it sits like concrete in the middle. So it's a binge afterwards."

A week at the Alhambra will afford her and husband David the chance to explore Salt's Mill, Ilkley and Haworth. For him, it's almost home ground.

"Yes, he's a Yorkshireman," says Liza. "He's from the east coast. But we live in Norfolk now. When we married, my house in Surrey wasn't big enough for him."

Their wedding, five years ago, was Liza's third. She was married first to the former Doctor Who, Colin Baker; then, famously, to Alvin Stardust, whose active Christianity she blamed for their divorce in 1987. Later, she was linked mischievously with her Bergerac co-star John Nettles.

Life in Norfolk suits her, she says. "We've got two horses, six dogs and two cats. That's why I'm working - to pay the vet's bills and the farrier fees.

"My horses are both lame and they're wearing £100 shoes. We don't have £100 shoes, but they do. It's a very expensive business."

Country life has also brought Liza her own local TV series, in which she and her dog Mina tour East Anglia, meeting the locals.

Christmas will see her back there, cooking lunch for David, son Tom and daughter Sophie.

"Usually, I do a pantomime at Christmas, but no-one's asked me this year. Shame - it's the only chance I get to sing and dance."

Her current role is more restrained, but she nevertheless describes The Importance of Being Earnest as the broadest of comedies.

"It's an absolute stonker of a comedy. Not unlike a farce or a modern American sitcom - a strong plot, but an enormous number of one-liners. Wilde was the greatest writer of them all.

"I've been loving it every night. I'd play this part for ever if I was allowed to - until I was Edith Evans's age, in fact."

l The Importance of Being Earnest, also starring Dora Bryan and Geoffrey Davies, is at the Alhambra, Bradford, from Monday to Saturday. For tickets availability, call 01274 752000.

David Behrens

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