I thought I’d pass out before my first scene in Rovers, says Corrie’s Kate

YOU can understand why Kate Anthony was so nervous.

She’d grown up watching Coronation Street, and all of a sudden, she’s actually in it, as “Auntie Pam” Hobsworth.

And to make matters worse, her first scene was filmed in the iconic Rovers Return.

“It was very odd and really, really frightening!” laughs Kate, currently touring in the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes.

“It was the scariest thing. I remember thinking: ‘I’m going to pass out here, I’m that nervous’ but Maggie Jones, who played Blanche, was just a joy.

“I’ll never forget that scene we talked about the decline of the milk-based pudding and her with that dead-pan face!

“It is the spookiest thing in the world, when you actually realise: ‘What am I doing? I’m sitting in the Rovers!’.

“Even though it’s a set, it’s still the Rovers, and every actor has that moment of: ‘Gosh, I’ve got to film in the Rovers, it’s my first scene in there’, so I was quite pleased it was one of my early scenes to get it out of the way.

“Maggie was a joy but they all were. I worked a lot with Alan Halsall, who played Tyrone, and Vicky Binns, who played my niece Molly, and also the late Bill Tarmey, who was iconic.

“They made it look so easy, they helped me so much.”

Auntie Pam was one of those characters Corrie does so well. As Kate says: “They write brilliant comedy characters.

“Especially when I first came into it, we had all those scenes of her wheeling and dealing. She had her fingers in so many pies and some of her lines are the funniest I’ve ever said.

“I loved playing her, I thought she was great fun.

“I think I was meant to stay six months and ended up doing four years.”

Kate’s one of those rare actors to have been in both Corrie and EastEnders, in which she played a doctor for two episodes in 2006.

“People seem to be fans of one or the other, and I also think there’s a north/south divide as well,” she nods.

“I’m from Leeds, so all my life it was Coronation Street, that’s all we ever watched.

“I vaguely remember my parents tuning in when EastEnders first started but not really getting into it, and I think it’s pretty much the same in the south, they’re very much EastEnders and not necessarily into that Corrie northern humour.

“They’re very different. It used to be that Coronation Street was more character-led, and EastEnders more story-based, though they’re getting more similar now.”

Kate’s co-star in Anything Goes is Albert Square legend Shaun Williamson, who was much loved as the hapless Barry.

“Shaun’s great fun,” says Kate. “He’s such a funny man, he has me in stitches which isn’t helpful when you’ve only got two weeks to rehearse and half the time we’re laughing!

“Some of the lines are brilliant. It was written at the time of the Great Depression purely as propaganda to cheer everybody up and it’s littered with these amazing Cole Porter songs like I Get A Kick Out Of You.

“It’s all great fun and when you see a whole stage of people tap-dancing, it’s brilliant. It’s feelgood.

“I haven’t done a musical for years and the last theatre I did was about the miners’ strike in the 70s, set in Sheffield, so it was very different there was no comedy and certainly not a tap routine!

“It’s lovely to be singing again as it’s years since I did any musical stuff, a long time ago when I’d just left drama school.

“It’s great to get singing warm-ups and dance ones I’m hoping I’m going to get fit on tour!”

Anything Goes is at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre April 21-25 and tours the UK until October.