Coronation Street (ITV1, 8.30pm).

IT’S the question Katherine Kelly is always being asked – how like Coronation Street’s Becky is she? Meeting her, you appreciate she’s softer and less brash than her soap character.

And less mouthy too.

Since arriving in Weatherfield threeand- a-half years ago, she’s developed into one of Corrie’s best characters, loved by the show’s writers and viewers alike.

She thinks I’d be better off asking those around her about the similarities between her and Becky.

“David Neilson (who plays Roy Cropper) sometimes walks past me when I’m dressed as myself because it’s a totally different energy as well. She’s almost on her toes all the time, like a greyhound about to shoot off,” she says.

There are so many different sides and layers to Becky, she continues.

“I’d say she works hard and doesn’t do anything by halves, which tends to be me, and she tries to be a good person.

“The joy for me is the way they keep mixing it up. Sometimes, it’s like high farce and the next thing she’s in a cell.

That’s what’s kept me interested in the part.

“I don’t get recognised a huge amount.

I walk past a lot of conversations, arguments whether it is or isn’t me.

“But some kids are brilliant. Kids totally know you. I was in a shop in Wakefield once and there was a little two-yearold and he was sat on the counter and going to his dad, ‘telly, telly’.”

Becky Granger is now a married woman, Becky McDonald, so the actress sees the Corrie spin-off DVD Romanian Holiday as “like the last hurrah for Becky Granger”.

Shooting the DVD was no holiday. As soon as she’d finished shooting the Becky and Steve wedding story, she was on the plane to Romania. Becky’s outfits arrived but Kelly’s own clothes went missing, causing her to spend two days in Becky’s costumes both on and off the set.

Not that Becky wears that much. “Obviously that was what was going to happen with a 20-something girl, she wears next-to-nothing in the cold streets of Weatherfield,” she says.

“In my mind, she’s on holiday with her parents. But Becky doesn’t care what she looks like. She’ll get dolled up but also look like crap as well. Depends how she feels that day.”

By the pool Becky wears a bright pink bikini with the words MRS MCDONALD inscribed on the bottom. The wording was Kelly’s idea. “It says in the script that she dives into the pool and I thought I’m going to bomb it, she wouldn’t dive. I wanted to keep it fun.

“I didn’t particularly want it to be a sexy role. They’re all on holiday. It’s just what they do – Roy stays in his coat, Becky’s like, ‘it’s boiling, I want to get a tan’.

“I find everything a lot easier to do in character than I do in real life. I felt more self-conscious on our day off when we were round the pool at the Radisson with four crew members. That’s really weird, I’m sat with people from work in a bikini and yet the day before I’d been waltzing around in a pink bikini and bobbing around.”

She’s surprised to find herself so happy in a soap. It’s not what she thought Corrie would be from the outside looking in.

“I thought it would be a nine-to-five job but I still enjoy it far more than I ever imagined. I didn’t think this job would be for me because you go to drama school to play lots of different parts.”

■ Romanian Holiday is available to buy on ITV DVD.