HOWZAT

It was while they were holed up in LA that she took some acting classes again. “I thought, now is the time to get an agent, get my ten-by-eights and try to get a job.” She went for the Sienna Miller part in Alfie; she was up for Fantastic 4, too. There was something else, but she can’t remember. “Oh, of course, this was a kick in the balls — Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, the part of Nancy. I was so gutted when I didn’t get that.” Make no mistake, though, Doctor Who will have secured her a bigger audience than any of the above.

The seasonal episode will doubtless be ripping family entertainment: “Aliens meddling with Christmas,” she says. There’s no point asking her about how the new series match up to the old ones — she wasn’t around — though the big difference, clearly, is the frisson between the Doctor and his traditionally comely assistant. Are we to believe that, in the expanse of space and time, and with nobody else around, in the darkest recesses of the Tardis, Rose and the Doctor don’t actually get it on? She giggles. “I think they’re desperately in love with each other. You’ve got to believe there’s some kind of spark that keeps Rose going off with this guy, leaving earth, jumping in a blue box and seeing things that nobody can even imagine. But there is a line — one mustn’t cross it.”

There is, it turns out, a new beau for Piper — Amadu Sowe, a recent law graduate who once worked at her record company. She first met him when she was 13: “He’s lovely,” she coos. With her time through to next April spent zipping up and down the M4 to the Doctor Who studios in Cardiff, he will be seeing less of her than the bloke at the Severn toll booth; but Swindon is conveniently placed for a halfway cuppa. Proudly, the This Is Wiltshire website lists Piper as one of its favourite daughters (along with Melinda Messenger). “I know, it’s so sweet,” she chirrups.

Piper has to go — she has a doctor’s appointment. Her Porsche 911 is waiting. She loves cars: Evans wooed her with a £100,000 Ferrari filled with rose petals before she had even got her provisional licence. It is yet more infor- mation that would cause a PR minder to have kittens. I wonder why she doesn’t employ a publicist, instead of just waltzing into her local, talking so candidly about everything, especially after being so skewered by the press and encountering some nasty trouble with stalkers. “It’s just embarrassing,” she says. “You don’t need all that. The more people you bring into your life, the more you’ve got to pay, the more people know about everything. It just gets a bit messy.” She used to, back in the singing days. “But I don’t ever want to return to that kind of behaviour, because it’s just so arsey.”

Much Ado About Nothing will be screened on BBC1 in early November

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