IT'S a surprisingly soft voice which answers the phone when you ring Lesley Joseph.

So familiar is she in larger-than-life character that it's odd to hear her in calm and relaxed at-home mode.

She is known to just about everyone as Dorien, the gold-dripping, man-eating queen of Chigwell, from the huge TV hit Birds of a Feather, in which she starred for nine series.

She counts the show as one of her favourite jobs, among a packed CV on stage and screen, but people will see a different side of her when she appears in Office Suite, an Alan Bennett double bill showing in Malvern from August 11 to 16.

"I really enjoyed Birds of a Feather," she said. "But it's interesting that you constantly have to remind people what else you can do - otherwise they forget and so do you!"

It is a while since she has taken on straight theatre work, for which she was trained, but she has not been out of the spotlight. Another of her favourite jobs was a two-and-a-half year run in the musical Annie, in which she particularly enjoyed belting out the song Easy Street, even after so long. And back to her larger-than-life character acting, another of her great loves is panto. "I love to work with an audience and make them laugh, it's such fun," she said. "But it's been nice lately to be able to dig in and do something quite serious."

This is the first major stage production of Office Suite, which was written in the 1970s for television, Viewers may have seen Patricia Routledge taking on the major women's roles.

Now it has been revived and it was while Lesley was appearing on stage in Bath in the Vagina Monologues recently that Lesley was approached by Bath's Theatre Royal to take on a rather different role and play the part of Miss Prothero in the first of the two short plays.

A Visit from Miss Prothero is about a retired man who worked at a firm for 30 years. He has a visit from a woman who used to work for him who visits to fill him in on office goings-on "and in the course of an hour she really destroys his life", said Lesley. Edward Harwicke, famous as the definitive TV Dr Watson, is her only co-star in the piece.

She said she was surprised to be approached. "I've never done Alan Bennett plays before," she said. "I always imagined them for a different type of actress and at first I thought I wouldn't know where to begin but then I decided to give it a go and it's been like going back to kosher acting. I've been doing musicals and other work on stage but not a proper play for a long, long time."

The Office Suite tour comes to the end of its run at Malvern, so some special performances are likely.

The second play is called Green Forms, where Bennett gives us a slice of office routine via the conversations of stalwart workers Doris and Doreen, chewing over work and home-related topics.

See Office Suite at Malvern from August 11 to 16, with matinees on the Wednesday and Saturday. Call the box office on 01684 892277.