Lisa Williams chats to Jane Horrocks about starring in Sky1’s new supermarket-set comedy Trollied.

WHEN Jane Horrocks walks off set wearing a charcoal skirt suit, lime green shirt and vivid peach lipstick, she could be any shop assistant coming off the supermarket aisles for her lunch break.

She’s even wearing a name badge, although on closer inspection it’s emblazoned with ‘Julie’.

Behind her, a sign reading Valco looms large.

It may be a studio underneath, but the supermarket set of new comedy Trollied, starting Thursday on Sky1 at 9pm, is so vast and realistic, you’re tempted to slot a pound into one of the trolleys and start stocking up on ‘Treat Yourself’ frozen lasagne.

Unlike most sitcoms, Trollied isn’t being filmed in the corner of a draughty warehouse.

It’s a vast production for Sky1HD, complete with shoppers in anoraks who weave their way through the promotional displays, set up beneath strip lighting.

“For them to have built this arena for us to play in is brilliant.

“I don’t think it would have been feasible in a real supermarket, unless you did it all on night shifts,” says Horrocks.

Her character is a fiercely ambitious, rather snobby lifetime employee of the Warrington branch of fictional store Valco.

“Julie’s worked there for 20 years so she knows it back to front,” she says, with a flutter of her heavily made-up eyelashes.

She’s even taken her admiration to the next level by formulating a crippling crush on the store manager Gavin, in front of whom she turns into what Horrocks describes as “a gibbering wreck”.

But there’s a sad story beneath Julie’s thick lipstick and bossiness, as Horrocks explains: “She was jilted four years ago so she’s carrying all that angst, and it crops up on many occasions.

“The man who dumped her is just known as The b******d.”

Horrocks, known primarily for playing airhead assistant Bubble in the 90s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, leapt at the chance to play jobsworth Julie as soon as she read the script.

She said: “I really wanted to do it and I’ve not felt that way about anything for a long time,” she sighs.

And, when she found out The Office producer Ash Atalla was on board, nothing could stop her getting that role.

“I saw that as a very good sign. I would have been cross if someone else had played the part.”

Naturally Horrocks will be hoping Trollied will have the same universal appeal of Ricky Gervais’s creation, which has spawned seven versions across the globe, with a US and an Israeli remake among them.

“Most people go to supermarkets to shop, so I think people will recognise things in it like manoeuvring trolleys and opening those silly little bags for your fruit and veg.”