LISA Riley has always had a ball in Cinderella, playing the Fairy Godmother several times, but the enjoyment is even greater now that she has switched to the dark side in her Grand Opera House debut in York.

“Simon Barry [the pantomime producer] has been after me to play the baddie for a while…and I love it,” says Lisa, the former Emmerdale soap star and You’ve Been Framed presenter.

“You get the first two shows where you’re being booed and you think, ‘Ooh, I don’t know…’, but actually I’m really enjoying it, and I’m made up because, being a big girl, you get new costumes every year – though my dad thought there was a lot of cleavage going on!”

From December 10 to January 2, Lisa is playing Baroness Sadista and she has grown into the role quickly. “The key is, you play the silence. You let the audience boo, go silent, boo again, then say ‘Sorry, you’re still speaking?” and then you think, ‘Right, now I’ll speak’,” she says, in her dressing room in the break between shows last Monday.

“It’s a completely different skill from playing Fairy, trusting in silence, but what’s so nice for me is that I also get to play around in the 12 Days Of Christmas routine, playing ‘netball’.”

By “netball” Lisa is referring to the moment when she throws a stray loo roll from the routine into a stalls box while standing among the audience. It is a scene typical of her high-energy performance, the poster face of the Grand Opera House pantomime coming even more to the fore in the enforced absence of Stuart Wade’s Buttons after he suffered a back injury in an early performance.

Best known for her seven years in the Yorkshire lass role of Mandy Dingle in Emmerdale, the Bury-born actress is enjoying the chance to “posh up” to play a baroness in panto. “It’s great because as soon as I left Emmerdale, every script I was sent was for a busty barmaid with a northern accent,” says Lisa, whose facility for accents found her doing a Scouse voice the other day for a radio advertising campaign for a Liverpool shopping centre.

“No-one would know it’s me!” she says. Nevertheless, there is never any mistaking Lisa in the flesh, and her effervescent personality has made her in demand each panto season.

“This year is my 13th panto, and I also did that telly panto with Ralph Little, Patsy Kensit, Julian Clary, Paul Merton, Ed Byrne…I played So-Shy or not-So-Shy in my case.

“It’s always on ITV2 on Boxing Day so a nice cheque comes in each year!”

For all her ebullience, Lisa takes pantomime very seriously. “I can’t understand the attitude ‘It’s only pantomime’. For children, it’s the first live show they see. It matters,” she says.

“Pantomime is a tradition in this country that we should be proud of, and I am so proud to be involved.”

Come the end of Lisa’s run as Baroness Sadista on January 2, there will be no rest for the wicked. “I start rehearsals for the new Calendar Girls tour on the Tuesday morning after leaving here – I have to be in east London by half past ten that morning!” she says.

“I believe that only Ruth Madoc and me of the cast are in panto, and they want me off the book by the time we start rehearsals.

“So I’m trying to do two hours in the morning and two hours when I get in, to learn the lines, but what with two shows a day and buying Christmas presents, it’s difficult to fit it all in.”

Lisa has accepted the role of Ruth at the third time of asking. “Ruth is Miss November, the topiary picture. She’s the wallflower in the group, the do-gooder; if something needs doing, she does it – but she needs a serious amount of alcohol to get her through it when she has to be photographed!” she says.

Already Lisa has lined up alongside fellow naked calendar girls Ruth Madoc, Lynda Bellingham, Gwen Taylor, Diana Moran, Bernie Nolan, Jennifer Ellison, Trudie Goodwin and Danielle Lineker for a publicity photograph on a tour that will open on January 26, aptly in Bristol. Leeds Grand Theatre awaits in March.

“What’s going to be lovely for us is that the original Calendar Girls were Yorkshire girls, so we’ll have big fish to fry in Leeds because we really have to do them proud on their territory,” says Lisa.

Nudity on stage holds no fears for her. “It’s all smoke and mirrors and lots of fabric – and for me more so than the rest!” she jokes. “We’re naked on stage for a reason and there’s not an inch of smut anywhere…but I mustn’t drop my topiary!”

Cinderella runs at Grand Opera House, York, until Sunday, January 2; no performances on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Box office: 0844 847 2322 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk. Calendar Girls will play Leeds Grand Theatre from March 7 to 19 2011, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Box office: 0844 848 2703.