'I've just come off stage, had a shower, removed my tan and I'm waiting for my husband to come back with six chicken McNuggets,' gushed Gwen Taylor in reply to the usual meek 'How are you?'

The thing that first strikes you about this bubbly actress is the speed that words pour out of her.

If there were a way of measuring words-per-second I imagine she ranks somewhere close to a formula one car.

Don't misunderstand me, the words aren't inane, or self-indulgent. They are all relevant, enthusiastic and full of happiness, fulfilment and sheer joy.

Gwen loves her job and she is ecstatic about standing centre stage to deliver a script that she believes is already a classic, Willy Russell's Shirley Valentine.

When we spoke she had just finished a matinee performance of the play in Sheffield.

It tells the story of a housewife fed up with her ungrateful family, who wants to discover the woman who got lost somewhere between the aisle and the kitchen sink.

It's a storyline that touches a nerve with women up and down the country.

When Shirley Valentine closes in Westcliff it will be the end of a tour that has run since March, criss-crossing the United Kingdom, and Gwen is looking forward to the break in her hectic schedule.

"I'm already beginning to wind down in my mind," she confessed. "Not on stage though - on stage I'm still flat out!"

Gwen Taylor is an accomplished actress. Most of us will be familiar with her from our televisions screens in sit-coms like A Bit of a Do, Duty Free and more recently in Barbara, which finished last weekend.

Shirley Valentine is a monologue and must be very different for her to perform.

"It's incredibly different, I'm a great reactor and there isn't another actor walking onto the stage saying 'hello I'm another character' and taking the attention.

"It's just you and the kitchen wall.

"It's a most wonderful script though. It's a really good feeling to stand on the stage thinking 'I've got something nice for you to listen to.' It's very nice - most people's cup of tea.

"It's very different to the film. The film has other characters - you couldn't just make a film of the stage show it would be boring - but while the film gains from showing the sights and sounds of Greece and the estate where she lives it loses Shirley's own imagination."

Shirley's character isn't so different to other women she's played though "Rita in A Bit of a Do is swamped by her husband.

"But I've never played a woman with quite such a wasted intelligence as Shirley."

Willy Russell has written about a woman realising she's not as dim as she's been led to believe before, with Educating Rita, and Gwen believes there are plenty of women in that situation.

"While I've been here I was asked to launch a women's education bus. It's a fantastic scheme. It is kitted out with PCs, and a creche, so that women who are trapped with small children, and sometimes no husband, can train and get a foothold out."

Gwen also took a decision that changed her life. She was 26 when she packed in her secure bank job to go to drama college

"It was the best decision of my life," she says - which is what Shirley Valentine says about her journey to drink wine in the land where the grape is grown.

Shirley Valentine is at the Cliffs Pavilion, Station Road, Westcliff until Saturday. Box office 01702 351135.

Life's a beach - Gwen Taylor plays Shirley Valentine, the 40 something who finds her true self on a Greek holiday

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