As Debbie of Archers fame, Tamsin Greig rarely has anything to laugh at on radio. But she tells Steve Pratt she's struggling to keep a straight face during the making of Black Books, which returns for a second series next week.

THE name Tamsin Greig might not mean much to people, but the voice certainly does to regular listeners of BBC Radio Four's The Archers.

She plays Debbie Aldridge in the long-running radio soap and reports that she gets recognised by members of the public, simply through her voice.

"It does happen. And that really does take a lot of hours of committed listening to Radio 4," she says.

"I think it's really clever. You'd have to be really discerning to recognise just a voice like that. One person recognised my voice and said to me, 'I just wanted to say how much I love your pauses'.

"And I thought, basically you love it on radio when I don't talk' - which is a quite interesting concept for radio."

The public will be seeing a lot more of the actress when she returns in a new series of Channel 4's cult hit comedy Black Books, with Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey.

The two series could hardly be more different. One is an everyday story of farming folk, the other is a dark, twisted comedy series about people running a bookshop and existing on the margins of society.

In Black Books, Greig plays Fran Katzenjammer, who's selfish, confused and needy. She has no friends, makes up stories about her life, and depends entirely on an aggressive alcoholic and a brow-beaten hippy.

"Well, she's a bit of an oddball," she admits. "In a way, she's more dysfunctional than Bernard and Manny (played by Moran and Bailey). They both have jobs and solid homes and an ongoing, albeit destructive, relationship.

"She doesn't have any of that. She doesn't have a job, we don't know what her home is like, she doesn't have any connection with friends. So in society's eyes, she's totally dysfunctional."

Past episodes have featured such guest stars as Rob Brydon, Johnny Vegas and Jessica Stevenson. The new series welcomes Keith Allen and The Office's Lucy Davis (incidentally, another star of The Archers).

Then there's Annette Crosbie and Sam Kelly as Manny's parents. "They are just a class act," says Greig.

"I don't think they knew quite what had hit them when they came into rehearsals. There are no fixed words until about half an hour before we go in front of an audience. Nothing is finalised for a very long time.

"The general story is all planned out, but people who come in on the first day, having learned every word, realise very early on that it may have been a wasted effort.

"Stuff is always being changed, because they're always ready to have better gags and better words. But Annette and Sam adapted absolutely brilliantly, they were amazing.

"I wondered whether it might all be a bit bemusing for them, but not at all. There was one scene where they go to bed at the end of the day, and it's the most tender scene I've ever seen in a sitcom. It's just beautiful, and you realise you're watching class."

One of the big problems of making Black Books is not laughing when working alongside comedians. Greig admits to being very bad at keeping a straight face. Her co-stars occasionally lose it too, which she finds even worse.

"You might as well all just go home, and I might as well go and be a plumber. It's an absolute delight, and also a horror to me, because I like to think that I can do my job and I'm in control of myself, and at the end of the day, I really am not," she says.

She won't be drawn into saying who is the funniest off-camera. "But they both, in very, very different ways, delight in life. Just being around them, you're infected by their delight," she says.

"I've seen a lot of them doing stand-up. They're so different, that's the amazing thing. If you saw their solo comedy, you'd never put them together in the same show.

Then again, you'd never put someone from The Archers onto a show like Black Books. She won't say if she prefers one to the other as "it's like asking if someone would like to eat an orange or play the piano - both are delicious, and as difficult".

* Black Books returns to C4 at 10pm next Thursday at10pm

Published: 04/03/2004