All woman: we interview Jodie Prenger

West End star Jodie Prenger talks to Jane McGowan ahead of her starring role in the 30th anniversary production of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine

Jodie Prenger burst on to our TV screens in the 2008 talent show I’d Do Anything – the second outing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s series of quests to find fresh faces for the West End. Jodie, the big-voiced lass from Lancashire, saw off the likes of Samantha Barks – who went on to play Eponine in the multi-Oscar-winning Les Miserables – to land the role of Nancy in Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Oliver!

Since then she has been a regular on the small screen with frequent appearances on Loose Women and This Morning, as well as on the stage with acclaimed performances in Calamity Jane and the one-woman Lloyd Webber musical Tell Me On a Sunday. Now the larger-than-life actress 37-year-old is taking on the role of Shirley in Willy Russell’s 30th anniversary production of Shirley Valentine. The play is essentially a one-person monologue, as frustrated housewife Shirley talks to her ever-present companion the ‘Wall’, while she prepares a meal of egg and chips for her careworn, emotionally repressed husband.

“I keep being offered these one-woman shows, I think it’s because no on will work with me,” laughs Jodie. “But Shirley is wonderful, so heart-warming. It’s a gift,” she says adding that she had no qualms about taking on the huge role.

“I love to learn and discover new things,” she says. “Shirley is a legend in her own right and you have to do it justice. It’s all there in the writing, the timing, the comedy, everything. That’s what makes Willy a genius. He’s brilliant at bringing the page to life.”

Willy has been very supportive and very involved from the beginning – in fact, Jodie jokes that to get the part she “stood outside his front door for two years, hoping to bump into him”.

“You don’t say ‘No’ to a role like this, I was screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ – it was like a When Harry Met Sally moment,” she chuckles.

The five-month tour (which comes to Woking this month) will keep Jody on the road until the summer – and while you can tell she is truly grateful for such a role, there is one downside – the production will keep her away from her beloved dogs.

“I prefer them to humans if I’m honest,” Jodie admits. “My mum will look after them and the chickens. And the best bit of being away is coming home to them – that’s my happy place.”

Jodie is a fervent supporter of several animal charities including Dogs Trust and the Bristol-based Happily Ever After canine rescue facility.

“If I wasn’t doing what I was doing, I’d literally be at home with at least 50 dogs,” she says. “I have always had an affiliation with animals and always

tried to help them and now I can get involved in with the charities too. I cry and cry but I will always be involved.”

Following the run in Shirley Valentine, Jodie is lined up to star in Fat Friends, the brand new musical by, as she says, “another Northern powerhouse” Kay Mellor and Nicholas Lloyd Webber (son of Andrew). The action takes place in a Yorkshire Zumba class, populated with no-nonsense, salt-of the-earth types.

“That’s me all over,” says Jodie. “Some stars like being out in 20 layers of tan at press night parties, bonking a footballer, but I’d rather be in front of the fire, with the dogs at me feet, watching a good film. I’m just not that rock n roll.”