I've always had a problem with being sexy...

ACTRESS Joanna Page is talking sex - on screen, off screen, feeling uncomfortable playing sexy women, her experiences of nudity scenes, sexual harassment, and her ambitions to be a sex therapist.

- BY HANNAH STEPHENSON

The bubbly Swansea-born Gavin & Stacey star and presenter seems as much of an open book as her famous fictional alter ego Stacey Shipman as she speedily relays an endless stream of thoughts in that trademark Welsh lilt, barely pausing for breath, recalling eyeopening anecdotes which feature in her new autobiography, Lush!

Now 48, living in Oxfordshire with husband ex-Emmerdale actor James Thornton and their four children, Eva, 12, Kit, 10, Noah, eight, and three-year-old Boe, four guinea pigs and two dogs, Joanna says she's at a different place in her life and a fitting one to write her memoir.

James, to whom she has been married for nearly 22 years, features prominently, as does family life and the juggling they have to do.

"We had sex once!" she states frankly when talking about conceiving their fourth child when she was 44, before conversation skitters to the argument she and James had earlier in the day re the school run.

"We'll have a good old barney, which kind of clears the air," she elaborates, explaining that sitting down and having a chat always gets things back on track.

"I'm like, before we have sex, I'm sorry but I need to sit down and have a coffee and we need to have a massive conversation. Then at the end of it I'll have sex with him."

No date nights, then?

"God, we haven't had a date night in 12 years!" she exclaims. The endlessly amusing asides make it impossible not to warm to Joanna.

From her happy childhood in Swansea to her unhappy days at RADA, where teachers were so negative it ruined her confidence - but she made a good friend in acting peer Maxine Peake - to her life as a jobbing actress on stage and screen, to triumphs and disappointments and the pure joy of working with the dream team on Gavin & Stacey, the book leaves no stone unturned.