From the Ashes

Few could realise the mammoth effort it takes for her to make the 200 yards to the hotel, and when we sit down she lifts one leg over the other with her hands to cross her legs, a movement second nature to most of us.

Then there are those terrible silicone lips which prompted the 'trout pout' label and which still stand out on her otherwise pretty face.

''I don't regret anything I've done apart from my lips,'' she reflects. ''At the time I found all the attention unbearable but I carried on working.''

Once one of the highest paid TV actresses in this country, starring in hit shows including Men Behaving Badly, Where The Heart Is and Merseybeat, Ash, 47, acknowledges that her earnings have slumped in line with her acting career.

Then there's her volatile marriage to ex-football star Lee Chapman throughout a series of public spats in which he was arrested and then had charges dropped, Ash has stood by her man, insisting he is not a 'wife-beater'.

''The only two people who could sort out our marriage was Lee and I - and we have. I'm looking forward to growing old together. We really get on.''

She is promoting her autobiography, My Life Behaving Badly, in which she defends him to the hilt, blaming alcohol and her unreasonable behaviour for many of their problems. She is now teetotal, although she says that Chapman still drinks (he runs a London bar and restaurant called So.Uk).

''Alcohol used to make me argumentative and aggressive. Since I've stopped drinking we haven't had arguments.''

She doesn't want to talk about his failings, insisting you have to read the book to put the various incidents into perspective.

Indeed, the stormy marriage and botched cosmetic surgery fade into insignificance when you read about the severity of the paralysis she suffered following an accident in 2004 after a drink-fuelled night on the town, in which she says she fell off their bed and into a bedside table during an energetic love-making session.

She was taken to hospital with two cracked ribs and a collapsed lung. Doctors gave her an epidural to relieve her pain and sent her home. But she was rushed back to hospital when she lost all feeling in her legs. An abscess on her back was removed in emergency surgery and doctors diagnosed that she had contracted the MRSA variant MSSA (Methicillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus Aureus). The abscess nearly killed her and the infection caused paralysis from her ribs downwards. She is suing Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and the case is ongoing.

Ash is still on painkillers, anti-depressants and sleeping tablets. She has an hour of physiotherapy every week, goes to the gym twice a week and has two sessions of Pilates. She can't walk further than about 200 metres.

''I've accepted it but now I'm making myself as fit as possible because of the degeneration as you get older. I was absolutely terrified at not being able to move. In hospital I was very tearful and there were long periods of being on my own. You have two choices: you either dwell on it or you do something about it.''

Her husband and sons Max, 18 and Joe, 15, were hugely supportive, she says, and after four months in hospital and some gruelling physiotherapy, Ash took her first steps in a determined bid not to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

Three years later her progress is massive, but some of the damage is permanent.

''Some areas of my back are numb. My hips, knees and ankles are numb but I can feel in between them. It's like when you lay on your arm and it goes to sleep - you can move it but you can't feel it.

''The way I walk is weird because I've only got patchy feeling in my feet, because of nerve damage. Regeneration is not complete.''

Slowly, Ash has come to terms with her disability. The whole experience has changed her completely, she reflects.

''I've taken a big step outside the box and looked at what my life was like before - juggling my career with being a wife and mother. We were party people (they owned the trendy London nightclub Teatro), and had a big social life which revolved around alcohol. We managed to fit everything in but we didn't enjoy any of it, apart from my kids.

''Now, all that's gone. I don't drink. Lee got rid of Teatro while I was in hospital so he could spend more time with me. The relationship between us is absolutely amazing now."

Their tempestuous marriage has alienated Ash from some of her acting friends, most notably Men Behaving Badly co-star Caroline Quentin, who had to deal with Chapman nearly kicking her front door down in a drunken rage in 1997 when Ash had fled there after a row.

And she cut herself off from her older sister Debbie, who told a tabloid that she feared for Leslie's life unless she left Chapman. More recently, Debbie told a Sunday tabloid that Lee had tried to bed her.

Ash was born in Mitcham, Surrey. Her father Moe fraternised with a lot of south London villains, although he was ''more of a Del Boy than a Ronnie Kray''.

Leslie and Debbie (a former Hot Gossip dancer) both went to the Italia Conti drama school when the family moved to Clapham. Her contemporaries included Bonnie Langford, Lena Zavaroni and Tracey Ullman.

She began her career as a model, appearing on the cover of Jackie when she was 16, and after two years clinched the role of Steph opposite Phil Daniels in the Who film, Quadrophenia. But it was as Debs, in Men Behaving Badly, that she hit the peak of her fame.

Today, her life is far less hectic simply because it has to be.

''I miss running up and down stairs, I miss the euphoria you get from when you've been running. And I miss things like not being able just to pop down to the shops.''

Acting may be now restricted to cameo roles because of her illness, she realises.

''What's frustrating is that I'm still an actress and I can still do it, I think. It's whether someone wants to take a punt on me and employ a disabled actress, because that's what I am.''

* My Life Behaving Badly, by Leslie Ash with Megan Lloyd Davies (Orion, £18.99).