Soap characters have a habit of going out of one scene and coming back looking completely different. The latest to undergo a head transplant is Sam Butcher in Eastenders

WHEN Albert Square's Peggy Butcher went to Spain for the funeral of missing husband Frank, she received a nasty surprise - he was still alive.

But that wasn't the most shocking part of her foreign trip. The news about her daughter Sam wasn't good either. It wasn't so much that she was working in a lap dancing club, more to do with the fact that she was a totally changed woman. Her mother didn't recognise her when she saw her, which was hardly surprising as she'd had a form of surgery that exists only in soaps like EastEnders - a head transplant. This is common in places like Walford, Weatherfield and Emmerdale. A character goes out of the room looking one way and re-enters months, sometimes years later, a completely different person. Soap children are particularly prone to changing faces.

Puberty not only results in their voices breaking and body hair growing, but sees their facial feature totally transformed, leaving them a new person. And so Sam Mitchell has joined the band of characters who've acquired such a new look. Danniella Westbrook has become Kim Medcalf. Which was bad news for Westbrook but most welcome for her successor, a former Bristol law student making her TV debut.

Having followed mum Peggy back to Albert Square and the Queen Vic, Sam lost little time in bedding Steve Owen shortly before his recent demise (although the two events are unconnected) and donning grieving widow's weeds, oblivious to the fact that Owen only slept with her to get back at her brother Phil.

Considering all this trauma, Medcalf is smiling and chatty at the BBC1 spring and summer launch. Her blonde hair and not unattractive appearance have led to her being labelled "the next Tamzin Outhwaite". That's the actress who plays Melanie, Owen's on-screen widow, and who is shortly to depart the series herself.

Medcalf is a natural successor. She knows the first thing that happens to anyone who joins a show as high profile as this top-rating, four-times-a-week soap. "Your anonymity goes out of the window," says the 28-year-old actress. "I'm starting to get recognised a bit now. People shaking my hand and telling me to hit Phil."

After the semi-comic Spanish interlude which re-introduced her character to audiences, Sam - "headstrong, streetwise and pretty" or "more East End moll than Barbie doll" according to one soap bible - has been busy sulking, pouting and causing sexual mayhem among the lusty Walford male population. Not that her brief fling with Steve improved her batting average when it comes to keeping her men friends. "Sam doesn't have much success when it comes to blokes," admits Medcalf, who's been with her off-screen boyfriend for the past two-and-a-half years. "She's always going to get into trouble when it comes to them."

One would expect a young attractive female character to work her way through the bedrooms of the Square's male population but, as the actress herself points out, there aren't that many eligible men left. Even pensioner Jim has recently wed Dot Cotton-that-was. So what is her type? She dodges the question by saying that "Steve Owen was definitely Sam's kind of man - a bit older, a bit of money. She thought he was going to be her ticket out of Walford."

Medcalf grew up with EastEnders. "I did watch as a kid, when it was Dirty Den and Angie. You always keep in touch with it. I have a lot of mates who watch it and talking to others in the cast helps you catch up," she explains. Yes, she knows that taking over a character created by another actress could have been a problem. She thought it was going to be much harder than it turned out to be.

There was certainly no slow introduction into the series. As an established character, she was thrown straight into major storylines, including Owen's explosive demise. What happens now is something known only to the producers and writers. Casts are famously kept in the dark about future stories involving their own character until they get the scripts shortly before filming.

"They don't tell you an awful lot," says Medcalf. "You find out as it goes along. I have a bit of a flirt soon but I can't say with whom."

The actress had barely left drama school when EastEnders came along. "This is the first time I've done anything in front of a camera. I'm learning so much. I have a lot to learn still and want to get it right," she says. "I couldn't believe they would take a risk with someone like me, just out of drama school. I think they were brilliant to do that. I still wake up in the morning and think, 'I'm on the biggest thing on the telly'."

Her first time on the outdoor Albert Square set at Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire, was a memorable experience. "It was spooky, like a ghost town. There I was in the middle of the square, thinking, 'this is my job now'." Other cast members made her feel welcome. Michelle Ryan, who plays the youngest Slater sister Zoe, took her out to lunch. She's friends too with Charlie Brooks, alias bad girl Janine Butcher, who has the dressing room next to her.

She's on a year's contract but sensible enough to know that her future in Walford depends on how the public reacts to the latest Sam. Let's hope they don't judge her on her skills serving behind the bar at the Queen Vic. If she's anything like Medcalf, she wouldn't last a week. "I was a terrible waitress and barmaid when I worked in a pub," she admits. "And it's really cramped behind the bar at the Queen Vic. There's not much room to squeeze by Phil Mitchell when you're serving."

EastEnders continues on BBC1 on Monday at 8pm, Tuesday and Thursday at 7.30pm, and Friday at 8pm, with an omnibus edition on Sunday.

Published: Saturday, March 23, 2002