IT says a great deal about Clare Grogan that she was prepared to stick herself in front of a television screen and watch Neighbours for an entire week.
IT says a great deal about Clare Grogan that she was prepared to stick herself in front of a television screen and watch Neighbours for an entire week.
The Glasgow-born singer-turned-actress-turned-writer had never watched the Aussie soap in her life. Yet the former Gregory's Girl star was prepared to suffer for her art.
"It's not a programme I'd normally watch," she says of the teatime show.
"However, I sat down to watch it with my mother-in-law, and it became a ritual."
The reason the former Altered Images singer turned on to life in Ramsay Street was to pick up an Australian accent.
Clare is one of the stars of The Last Variety Show, a new Radio Scotland comedy drama set in 1962, which tells the story of a group of entertainers desperate to rescue a struggling theatre -and their careers.
Clare plays theatre manager Mr Watson's secretary in the show, (played by Ford Kiernan) and her character Alice is Australian.
However, when Clare signed up for the radio play, which also stars Gerard Kelly, Alex Norton, Karen Dunbar and Barbara Rafferty, she admits she wasn't entirely honest about her ability to get on top of the Down Under accent.
"I'd never done Australian in my life. So I knew I'd have to go off and learn it," admits Clare. "And I did."
She adds; "All those hours watching Neighbours really helped but Ford, who also directed me, gave me tips. He's fantastic with accents.
"Buy you know, I really wanted to be part of a funny show that included so many fantastic actors. As a result, I had a great time doing it."
The actress, who is married to record producer Stephen Lironi and has a five year-old daughter, Ellie, has been busy on other fronts. The Eighties pop revival means she and her Altered Images bandmates are back in demand.
"I played a picnic party last week alongside Bananarama and Belinda Carlisle," she says.
"And Last month I played Wembley, alongside Kim Wilde.
"My daughter Ellie loved it too. My sister Margaret organised a limo for her and her cousins to go to the show. Boy were those girls loud. At the end of the trip the limo driver said Please never book me again!'"
Clare still loves a shock frock, and while she may be heading towards the late end of her forties she still has all the electric enthusiasm she had as a schoolgirl waitress in the Spaghetti Factory in Glasgow's Gibson Street, where she once dressed as a Latin American ballroom dancer and was discovered by Gregory's Girl director Bill Forsyth.
Most of her energy right now is going into a follow up to her first novel, Tallulah and the Teenstars, loosely based on Clare's own teen pop experience.
Does the follow-up novel follow in the familiar rock chick groove - find fame, run through a series of famous boyfriends, have a high profile relationship before marrying a film director and adopting an African orphan?
"No!" says Clare, laughing. "Tallulah doesn't do any of those things. Remember my own pop experience was fairly innocent. And the book is aimed at young girls."
Clearly, Tallulah will in fact go on to leave the band, become a successful actress and star in a radio play as an Aussie temp.
"That's the Part Three storyline taken care of," says Clare, grinning.
- The Last Variety Show, part of Radio Scotland's Summer In The Sixties series, goes out on Monday at 1.15pm.
