A FEW months ago Amanda Barrie would never have spoken to me. The few interviews she granted were conducted along strictly-controlled guidelines barring any intrusion into her personal life. Barrie was one of the country's most familiar faces as Alma in Coronation Street, but her private life remained off limits. Not to her friends in the business, but certainly to press and public.

Now that the "secret" is out - Barrie has shared relationships with both men and women - and the Lancashire-born actress is clearly happy at being able to talk freely without fear of her sexual preferences being exposed. Her autobiography, It's Not A Rehearsal, is an engrossing mix of the good times and the bad times, the gossip and the heartache.

Yes, she admits after a book-signing session in Borders in York, she feels unburdened. Her reluctance to do interviews during her decade or more in the Street was not because she was ashamed of her behaviour, more a desire not to conspire in a cover-up. "I don't think any more that if you're in the media you can do interviews and TV appearances where you can't be honest. People can tell," she says.

Rather than lie, she said nothing. She also didn't think revelations about her private life would've been "acceptable" while the viewing public saw her as Alma three or four times a week. "I didn't want to muddle my private life with my screen things, because I don't think that's what you're employed to do," she explains.

If you're in a soap, you always get asked to do a book. That wasn't her reason for writing it. Seeing telephone numbers for a Sunday tabloid written on the script of someone involved in the Street made her realise that if she didn't say something, someone else would. "I had a few ghosts and skeletons in my cupboard, all of which had been shot to the press at one time or another. It had been hanging over my head that someone was going to write about me. I thought if anyone was going to, it was going to be me," she says.

"I know that people say, 'I had to do this' but the book came about because I'd always been driven into a corner by the press in a way. I just thought I didn't want some lurid headlines. It's amazing how things sound different in tabloid headlines. I don't mind if I've written it myself.

"I'm really glad I've done the book. I didn't think it would make any difference to me. I just wanted to get down the truth, although I don't go around naming other people. I don't really agree with that."

The story of the girl born Shirley Broadbent is a fascinating one, even without her frank account of her private preferences. She left school at 13 to become a Soho chorus girl, her first break was as a hostess on Hughie Green's Double Your Money, and she became a cult figure as Cleopatra in Carry On Cleo. She first appeared in Coronation Street as Alma Sedgwick in 1981, returning as a regular in 1989. She left last year, killed off in a controversial cancer storyline.

All this, plus tales of a menage a trois (Barrie, her husband and her female lover), her female loves, and an affair with pop star Billy Fury. Soap, sex and Carry On comedy - you really can't ask for more in a showbiz biography.

TV writer Hilary Bonner helped pen the book as Barrie is "so dyslexic I can't write anything". The actress is pleased with the reaction to it. Her friends were "completely underwhelmed" because they've known all along. Rather than hurling stones, the public have been saying, "Can I give you a hug?", although she does think that prejudice, whether sexual or racist, is an ageist thing. Younger people don't bother about it so much.

Since leaving the Street, she's hardly stopped working. Pantomime was followed by a summer season, in Alan Ayckbourn's comedy Absurd Person Singular, and now a regular role in ITV's cult hit series Bad Girls.

She and Stephanie Beacham play a pair of con artists put behind bars. Filming will keep her busy until April, although she is being let out to do pantomime. She's playing the Genie of the Lamp, but since hurting her foot, says the role may have to be renamed Genie of the Limp.

One reason for quitting the Street was to have more of a life as the hours making the Manchester-based soap were long and hard. Then Bad Girls came along. "I wasn't looking for TV work," she says. "If you've been in a soap I didn't think they'd want you rushing straight into another series. Bad Girls just turned up, which was rather nice. When I saw it, I thought it was good and the producer is Brian Parks, whom I am a great fan of, and thought, 'I should be so lucky to go in a series that's almost as popular as Coronation Street."

What she's finding is that the schedule isn't that different to a soap. "It's a far more leisurely pace, but the hours are still the same. The big joy is to be going home at night," she says. "I have the same alarm I had all the way through Coronation Street. I didn't think it would be on the five o'clock in the morning mark any more when I left, but it is. But I get to work within half an hour and they send a car for me."

Her character Bev looks very different to Alma as Barrie wears a long red wig. "I look like Jane Asher's grandmother," she jokes. She's also established that Bev can smoke, something of a bonus after all those years as non-smoking Alma.

As we walk through Borders store, her attention is caught by the section on racing. That's a particular interest of hers. "I used to ride a lot and always loved horses," she says. "I would like to have been a jockey and my father did draw the line at that. Racing is a very emotional game. I couldn't own a horse because I would be in such a state about what happened when it finished racing."

She's also taken to watching Coronation Street, despite criticism in her book that it's not as good as it used to be. Barrie appears to have revised her opinion. "Now I love it," she says.

l It's Not A Rehearsal is published by Headline, £18.99.

Bad Girls is scheduled to return to ITV in the New Year.