Amanda: I'm much choosier picking parts now

Star on her latest role... as a woman just like her

- BY RICHARD BARBER

Amanda Redman's nickname is Wysiwyg - short for "what you see is what you get" - and her latest character has a personality to match.

A far cry from New Tricks' DS Sandra Pullman, Audrey Clement is a dispenser of tough love with a stiff upper lip honed in wartime.

She is the mother of Canon Daniel Clement, the protagonist of Murder Before Evensong, an adaptation of the Rev Richard Coles' bestselling ecclesiastical crime novel.

And she gets all the best lines.

"She's a wonderful character," says Amanda, 68. "And such fun to play.

"Parts like that don't come along very often. She's a woman, not unlike myself, who speaks her mind.

"Women like her just had to shut up and put up, as they say. I think that's a very healthy attitude.

"She doesn't suffer fools gladly. She just gets on with it. There's a line in the book I like: If she hadn't been a housewife, she'd be running the United Nations."