LESLEY JOSEPH, best known as superbitch Dorien from Birds of a Feather, is challenging herself with tough roles. She tells reporter Will Scott why she was so afraid of taking on a Alan Bennett play ONE of television’s favourite neighbours-from-hell is performing at the Churchill Theatre in an Alan Bennett play — something she would once have avoided at all costs.

Lesley Joseph, best-known as the man-eating Dorien in Birds of a Feather, stars with Edward Hardwicke in Office Suite, an hilarious double bill of one-act plays by England’s master of stage comedy.

The vivacious actor plays Miss Prothero, an unsavoury character who reduces the happy-go-lucky life of Arthur Dodsworth into misery.

Joseph told Leisure she was scared stiff of doing the play at first but now she can’t get enough of Bennett’s enlightening script of back-stabbing, illicit romances and thwarted egos.

She said: “I was asked to do this as a result of doing The Vagina Monologues in Bath.

“Danny Moore, the producer, said ‘Will you please, please, please, do an Alan Bennett play for me’.

“I said ‘I sooner run a mile. I don’t do Alan Bennett plays. I’ve never done northern’.

“I’ve never seen myself doing his plays because I’m scared stiff, if the truth be known. Then I thought, ‘This is pathetic. I’m an actress, this is what I do.’ “When I read the script I fell in love with it. It has such subtle humour and it’s been an absolute joy doing it with Ted [Edward] Hardwicke, who is just lovely.

“He writes so brilliantly for women one wonders what his influences were when he was growing up.” Joseph first came to fame as Dorien in TV sitcom Birds of a Feather, a part she played with vigour for nine series — that’s 103 episodes — before it ended in 1997.

She said: “We thought the show was good when we first did it but we were suprised at how big it became and how long it ran. It would still be going if we had agreed to keep doing it but we were all at the stage where we wanted to do something different.

“It is difficult to know when to kill things off but I would like to go back and do a resurrection and find out where they all are. I think the public would love that.

“Dorien came second to only Anne Robinson in a list of the world’s biggest bitches, which is a bit unfair because she is a big softy who says terrible things she doesn’t mean. I think everyone loved her because she was so vulnerable.

“The characters in the show were so rounded it bordered both sitcom and soap.” Joseph says the secret of the show’s success was down to the chemistry among the actors, who were great friends.

She said: “I don’t think the show would have worked otherwise.

“You could put five of the biggest stars from the stage or screen into something and it might fail. On the other hand you can have something like Stones in Their Pocket, with two unknown Irish actors, no set and a row of boots on the stage and it’s taken the world by storm. It’s all about chemistry — you can’t predict it.” When Joseph finished working on Birds of a Feather she spent two-and-a-half years in the West End musical Annie and appeared in the weird and wonderful TV drama Night and Day — a show some have described as a cross between Twin Peaks and Ali MacBeal. It didn’t do as well as she had hoped.

“Night and Day was innovative with some great parts but there were too many characters and too many storylines, which confused everyone.

“One of the mistakes was that people did not care for the characters and if that happens you’re not going to watch. You’ve got to want them to succeed or they’ve got to be so nasty you want them to fail.

“The storylines were too long as well but it was a great shame because it could have been great.” “However many people have adopted its the techniques since it finished.” Not one to sit still, Joseph will be taking on her toughest challenge yet when Office Suite closes. This time the chemistry will have to be between her and the audience as she will be performing alone.

Singular Women, a one-woman show, involves four heavy monologues.

She said: “Singular Women has four separate parts: the first is the Mysteries of a Dead Comedian, then a Jewish Woman Who Runs a Chocolate Shop, the third is about a shy schoolteacher who accidentally kills a child and the fourth is A Midget, which is savagely funny.

“When you put the four together it is magic and I’m really excited about it.

“There is a heightened reality about the monologues. They are very real but there is a sharpness about the way they are written.

But it’s one challenge at a time for the ever-growing actor. See Joseph conquer her first mountain when she takes to the stage in Bromley.

- Office Suite, Churchill Theatre, High Street, Bromley, June 30-July 5, 7.45pm, Thur & Sat mat 2.30pm, £21-£11, 020 8460 6677