Claire Sweeney would love to team up with her old Brookside boss Sir Phil Redmond to play a teacher in the new Grange Hill movie.
But the 50-year old joked she couldn’t teach maths after a “horrendous” time home schooling her seven-year-old son Jaxon.
Playing Lindsey Corkhill in the Liverpool-based soap made her a household name but after finishing runner-up in the first Celebrity Big Brother in 2001 she’s become a mainstay of British musical theatre.
She said: “I would like to get back on telly but it’s just getting the opportunities. Being in Grange Hill would be good but I’d have to be a drama or art teacher.
“It wouldn’t be maths after my homeschooling. It was horrendous. It was the only time me and my son argued and he’s only seven.
“He said, ‘Mummy you’re really good at most things but you just can’t do maths can you?’I said, ‘I can’t argue with that, son’. But we got through it.”
In fact, the self-confessed workaholic who spends much of the year on tour thoroughly enjoyed the enforced stay at home in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Claire, who is single, said: “It was a double-edged sword. I’m a mum and I’ve never spent that much time with my son without having to go off somewhere and work, so that was lovely. At the height of lockdown I could just be with my boy and be mum.”
Luckily Claire sold a villa in Majorca which she’d had for 16 years which meant she didn’t have to worry about money – especially as the entertainment industry was largely ignored by governments on both sides of the border.
She said: “I was in a comfortable position where I’d sold a property so I had a bit of savings so I could sit it out. I’d have hated to have been in a position where I hadn’t got that. That would have been hard. I was lucky.”
It wasn’t all plain sailing during the pandemic and she had a health scare thinking she might have the virus. The hospital thought she had pneumonia and she was out of sorts for five weeks.
She’s better now and her usual chatty self, promoting her latest tour – 9 to 5 The Musical, which arrives at Glasgow King’s Theatre on Tuesday.
Before discussing 9 to 5, Claire remembered Andy Gray.
He and Allan Stewart had swapped their usual panto home in Edinburgh for Milton Keyes for a socially distanced production of Sleeping Beauty at the end of 2020 and Claire was playing baddie Carabosse.
There had been a week of rehearsals but then English health chiefs placed the area under tougher restrictions and the panto was cancelled.
Andy, who had beaten leukaemia, died from Covid on January 18, 2021.
Claire said: “It puts everything in perspective. I was a big fan of Andy. I was really good friends with Gerard Kelly and he used to speak about Andy all the time.
"And then I spent a week in a rehearsal room with Andy and just saw the genius at work. What a joy coming out of lockdown to spend a week in a room with him just laughing so much.
"I was so blessed I got to spend that week with him and watch him.”
The current tour of 9 to 5 has been going around the UK for a while and Louise Redknapp starred in the show last year when it came to Scotland as Violet Newstead – the part Claire is now playing.
She took over the role last Thursday in Southend and is now in Oxford, which meant she could commute back to her home in London.
Claire didn’t even have a day off from finishing her stint as the Fairy Godmother in Southport’s panto Cinderella and rehearsing for 9 to 5.
She said: “I finished panto on the Sunday, started rehearsals on the Monday and lost my voice on the Tuesday so started the week’s rehearsal without a voice.
“I think it was the after-effect of panto but thankfully it’s back now. It was quite intense but I’m so glad to be working. I’m blessed.”
She’s looking after herself with vitamins and eating the right food.
Last year she turned 50 and admitted she had a bit of a “wobble” over the landmark celebration.
But she insists she’s fine now. “I feel great. I’m very cool with it,” she said.
Claire started singing in Liverpool social clubs when she was 14, moving to summer season, panto and cruise ships before joining Brookside in 1991 until it was axed in 2003.
In 2001, she was approached by Comic Relief to do the first Celebrity Big Brother. She was runner-up.
Claire said: “Before I went in, I auditioned for Chicago, and when I came out, obviously my profile had gone through the roof, and I got the part of Roxie Hart.”
Where once she’d been a TV favourite she has never looked back and stuck mainly to the stage, although she is seen regularly on TV and was a panellist on Loose Women, did the first series of Strictly Come Dancing in 2004 and last Saturday did Celebrity Catchphrase.
But while she waits for old boss Redmond to offer her that teaching job on the Grange Hill film, she will be singing and dancing in 9 to 5.
Her character Violet was played by Lily Tomlin in the 1980 film with Dolly Parton which told the story of three women who are pushed to the edge by their sexist and egotistical boss.
Claire said: “This show has been up and running for nearly a year and a half now and it’s like jumping on the fastest running machine ever and trying to stay on.
“It’s fabulous and when you start dissecting the music and learning the harmonies you realise what a genius Dolly is.
“The message is still very current. It’s about equal rights, getting what you deserve.”
● 9 to 5 The Musical at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, runs from Tuesday until Saturday, January 29.
