THERE WERE SO MANY LAUGHS'

Grant Dodwell and Wendy Strehlow remain the best of friends more than 40 years after they met on the set of A Country Practice

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Wendy lets rip with that distinctive laugh we all got to know in the 1980s when asked about Grant, who set hearts aflutter across Australia playing delightful Dr Simon Bowen in the much-loved drama series.

"I'm still very close to Granty - just don't let him near a machine," she tells Woman's Day, bursting into gales of laughter. "We'd be doing all this stuff with our medical adviser when Grant would be turning things on and off.

There were so many laughs." Wendy, 64, got her first big TV role playing Nurse Judy Loveday in A Country Practice straight after graduating from NIDA in 1981. "It was just amazing" she says.

"I did love my character, she was a lot of fun. I'm sure there's a lot of me in Judy Loveday, but I'm not as clumsy as she was! We just started doing that because it was fun to do. I'm also not as forthright as she."

FAN FEVER LIVES ON

Grant, 70, agrees that ACP was the best ever TV series to be on, saying it was magical working with the likes of the late, great Penny Cook, who played his wife Vicky, as well as Anne Tenney, 68, and Shane Withington, 64, who played Molly and Brendan Jones.