Will you have a strip tease?

SHE’S best known as dowdy Mrs Doyle, the “Will you have a cup of tea?” housekeeper and companion to Father Ted and his sidekicks. Now she’s had a makeover, taken up with one of TV’s most unsavoury characters and, hide your eyes now, stripped off for the camera.

We’re talking, of course, about Pauline McLynn and, as an actress, you’d expect her to be very different from her Father Ted character in that comedy series. She’s more glamorous for a start, but nothing prepares you for her latest small screen role – as the new love interest of walking disaster Frank Gallagher (played by David Threlfall) in C4’s Shameless The 47-year-old Irish actress has been cast as plucky but well-meaning librarian Libby Croaker. “I’m a bit nervous about it because it’s not exactly a part people have seen me play before,” she admits.

“I was always handier as character old crones, but now I get to be someone my own age and somebody’s love interest.

“And I have to get my kit off because it’s Shameless and sex with someone else, or something else, comes hand-in-hand with being on the Chatsworth.”

There is, she continues, a lot of bedroom action between Frank and Libby that involved her getting naked.

“It doesn’t bother me that people have clothes and underwear on during sex scenes, but if it’s a time when they should be naked then they should be naked, so I did get my kit off for the first time in my life... well the first time for money,” she says.

But what does Libby see in Frank, one of television’s biggest scoundrels?

McLynn has a fair idea. “Frank’s punching well above his weight here, but clearly he is brilliant in bed so that’s one of the things that keeps her there.

“Also he’s got a family and she really wants one. He does try to be a better man but hey, he’s Frank.”

One thing the role might do is help her to shake-off the Father Ted character, which, despite her starring role in Jam And Jerusalem and her prolific novel writing, is still what she is most recognised for.

“I have really fond memories but, you know what, rarely a day goes by when someone doesn’t mention it, when I don’t get recognised. People mention it so much because they love it. When I’m flicking around and it’s on the telly I tune in but I see it as ‘them’ not ‘us’ anymore,” she says.

She’s even said goodbye to her Mrs Doyle wig, the last remnant of what she had on the show.

“Recently I was in Dublin and I painted a 7ft Mrs Doyle angel for a charity campaign ((seeee BBuusinneess EEcho, PPaggee 2211). I brought my wig to the Shameless set – it had been in a box for ten years – and Emma, in make-up, put it on a block and fluffed it up. It was really strange. It was cathartic...

kind of symbolic, the last thing I had of it was gone, I just thought, ‘Let’s let her go’.”

OVER the past 25 years, that famous “doof-doof” at the end of an episode of EastEnders has soundtracked shocking revelations, uninvited guests turning up to parties at the Vic, and on one memorable occasion, a character returning from the dead.

Now to celebrate the soap’s milestone anniversary, EastEnders’ Greatest Cliffhangers sifts through nearly 4,000 episodes to find the 100 greatest cliffhangers.

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Lacey Turner, Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean are among the past and present stars sharing their memories of some of EastEnders’ most gripping moments.