ELAINE C. Smith doesn’t look like the cat who’s got the cream.

The comedy actress looks like she could well have scoffed the entire contents of a dairy.

Yet, the lady she has every reason to have the widest grin on her face. Elaine has just won the Royal Television Society Screen Award for On Screen Television Personality of the Year.

Glasgow Times:

Meanwhile, she’s set to work on a second series of the hit network comedy Two Doors Down.

On top of that she will star in a new film at the end of the year, (the details of which she can’t reveal as yet, but she does hint at a stellar cast.)

Meantime, the Rab C. Nesbitt star is about to front a new theatre show, That’s Entertainment, celebrating the biggest hits of the 30’s 40’s and 50’s.

Can life get much better, Elaine?

“No, I don’t think it can,” she says, grinning.

“I’ve never won an award in my life. I’ve never even won a raffle. The only time I was nominated for a Bafta Scotland was the year I’ve been nominated in the same category as Gregor Fisher.

“And how mad was that, to put both of us in the same category. It was insulting.”

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The actress adds; “As for this year, I thought Sean the Weather Man had a better chance of picking it up than me.”

She was wrong. Elaine’s travelogue and performance series Burdz Eye View of Scotland was a huge success, often beating Eastenders in the Scottish ratings.

“I’m happy to be working, happy to still be here,” Elaine adds, her comment reflecting the loss she has felt in recent years with the death of her mum, Stella.

“I’m fifty-seven. When I was twenty-seven I wanted success to happen overnight.

“But I had accepted my (working) life, the level I was at.

“Ten years ago I was in Aberdeen doing the theatre show Little Voice and looking in the dressing room mirror. And I said to myself ‘If this is as good as it gets, I’m happy.’

“The next day however I got the call from Calendar Girls asking me to go into the west end.”

She adds, grinning; “When you stop looking for romance and love in life it pops up.”

The actress has not only gone the distance but thrived in a business that dumps performers like used mattresses. And she’s learned.

“I’ve learned to be more confident about what I do, about putting the right emotion into the words and the lines will take care of themselves,” she says.

Elaine never stops working, never stops changing her mediums, from serious theatre with the likes of This Wide Night, in which she played an ex-con, to panto in Aberdeen.

“I’ve learnt more from the things that didn’t work,” she says. “I’ve earnt from the bruising I’ve taken from certain elements of the Arts community for doing commercial theatre such as panto.

“But I’m happy to have taken the commercial route. “To headline panto was a risk, it still is. I’m still the only woman doing it in Scotland.

“Yet, I wanted to give my kids a decent life. And I know so many talented people who have struggled to do this.”

Smith’s talent continues to shine though, evident in her huge success with the Susan Boyle musical I Dreamed A Dream and more recently Annie, offering up a Miss Hannigan who got big laughs.

Now, she’s set to appear in That’s Entertainment, a homage to the era of the likes of the Gene Kelly musicals.

Celebrating the music of Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, as well as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter there are also special tributes to the music of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Glen Miller, from films such as High Society, Singin’ in the Rain and Some Like it Hot,

“It’s a beautiful, high-kicking musical extravaganza,” she says, excitedly.

“This isn’t cutting edge theatre. But it’s high campery with me singing some songs and talking to the audience.

“I loved the idea of it. Growing up, I wanted to be Doris Day. I’d watch the Saturday afternoon musicals on BBC and I just loved them.

“That’s where I developed my love for showbiz; it wasn’t from going to theatre.”

She adds, grinning; “They’ll need a big hook to get me off stage.”

Is there any part of life that isn’t perfect?

“All this work means less time with my granddaughter, Stella,” she says of the two year-old.

“I’ll just have to work harder at having fun time with her.”

• That’s Entertainment, the Theatre Royal, June 7 – 11.