The Guardian

'I like a bit of daft'

Michelle Gomez has her eye on the waitress. "I've been watching her for the past wee while and when she's standing on her own, she has a very peculiar smile on her face. There's definitely something going on in the undergarments. I think she's got Chinese love balls up her."

We both turn to look at the waitress. She grins back at us, beatifically.

"You see?" Gomez nods, sucking in her cheeks and narrowing her eyes as if vindicated. "Love balls."

While unlikely in real life - though not, we establish, unheard-of - it's a scenario that wouldn't be out of place in Channel 4's weird and wonderful Green Wing. Gomez plays Sue White, the somewhat demented, misanthropic staff liaison officer who finds idle entertainment in tormenting her charges. It's a big, exuberant, cartoony, scene-stealing performance - and, of course, absolutely hilarious. In the second series, Gomez has flown around her office like a bird, demanded a chandelier on which to ride through the hospital, and taken a painting class, dressed as an artist, complete with beret and moustache. As she admits: "No one's ever going to say 'Michelle Gomez? It's all in the eyes, it's all contained.'" This is certainly true: Gomez has a gift for physical comedy, a near-manic energy, and a willingness to be silly."I like a bit of daft. The world is terrifying and grim, so what do you do? Worry about it or have some fun?"

There is, of course, more to it than a philanthropic urge to spread a little happiness. Gomez, who was captivated from a young age by the exploits of Lucille Ball and Marti Caine, says she is a shameless show-off. "I watched them and thought, 'I can do that - throw myself on the floor and act like a twat.' And really, it's a distraction, to distract the audience from the fact that I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Every job, I think I'm going to get found out, so I figure if I do something physical no one will notice that actually I have no idea what I'm doing. My family and friends are having none of it - they say that's just me being me, doing my party pieces, but on the telly. In a way, Sue is the laziest performance I've ever done."

Gomez doesn't think the character is too extreme. "I think she's a woman with an incredible creative mind who's bored and under-challenged. She hates her job. I think she behaves like we all do behind closed doors, but she does it in public. She says all the things you want to say to someone's face but don't. She attracts a lot of affection, and I think that's because people get a vicarious thrill from her behaviour."

Before Green Wing, there were the obligatory bit parts in The Bill and Taggart, but Gomez's big break came in Channel 4's The Book Group. She played brittle footballer's wife Janice, and was outstanding in a cracking ensemble.

Annie Griffin, who wrote and directed The Book Group, credits Gomez for bringing to life the character of Janice, a woman so repressed she couldn't admit her husband was gay. "She's got this incredible demonic performing energy, those mad eyes, and she thinks so fast. You watch her and you wonder, 'Is she really going to take it to that level?' Yes, she is. Michelle's not afraid of anything."

Gomez's next project is Feel the Force, a thoroughly silly comedy in which she plays PC Sally Bobbins opposite Rosie Cavaliero's PC Sally Frank. The two Sallys are policewomen with delusions of capability whose hopelessness drives their boss to distraction. As Gomez says, "They are fools, bumbling fools, the pair of them. Feel the Force is a big sticky bun. It appears to be sweet and cosy, but then you realise there's this dark streak to it."

Pastry metaphors aside, Feel the Force is clearly a more traditional sitcom than Green Wing, but it's still replete with Gomez's madcap energy. Does she worry about being typecast? "It's odd, because recently I've been described as a comedian. And I'm not. I'm an actress who does funny things sometimes."

Still, given that she has established herself as one of Britain's foremost comedy actresses when she was previously best known for being married to actor Jack Davenport, it would be a little churlish of her to start demanding to be taken seriously. Thankfully, Gomez doesn't, which I put down to her Scottish work ethic.

Gomez went to drama school in Glasgow. After she graduated, there were, she says, "a good 10 years of barrenness" during which she did dinner theatre and even "a wee bit of murder mystery on the QEII".

"It was absolutely humiliating," she says. Work was so scarce that she lied about what she did, telling people she was, among other things, a taxi driver: "I even had a laminated card made."

These days, she is glad of some time off. She has ambitions to do some "palate-cleansing theatre", and, in the longer term, be the first female Doctor Who, or do a bit of Noël Coward. "I'd like Jack and me to do Private Lives, directed by his mother [actress Maria Aitken]. We want camp, but we want high camp. That would be quite good. I'd have to keep my Glaswegian accent, of course."

She puts a lot into her work; she went straight from Green Wing into Feel the Force, working without a break for over a year. "It's really quite a pitch I'm at most of the time, and I might have to have a wee rethink about that. What will I do when I get old and tired?"

That seems a long way off. But if all else fails, Gomez says she could always go back to being a waitress, a job she did, off and on, from the age of 15 until, she says, "about five minutes ago".

I don't ask for her thoughts on using Chinese love balls at work.

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