'That wasnt my bum. I went for an upgrade

Sally Bretton’s hazel eyes have nearly popped out of her head. “Are you serious?” she says, with a sharp intake of breath. “Really?”

I have just broken it to her that if you Google her name, the second suggestion after “Sally Bretton” is “Sally Bretton bum”.

I’m not sure why she looks so horrified. It’s a gorgeous bum. And it appeared, in all its glory, in an episode of series 7 of Not Going Out, the BBC’s longest-running sitcom, a gag-heavy show written by and starring Lee Mack. It has also featured Tim Vine and (for two series) Miranda Hart.

If you’ve never seen it, Bretton, 39, is the main female actress – the landlady, the will-they-won’t-they love interest of Mack (who plays her feckless lodger), and about the only “proper” actress in a show whose cast is made up almost entirely of stand-ups.

This might explain why she has managed eight years as a lead on a hit show but has stayed entirely off the celebrity radar. While both Mack and Vine – during their time off – hit chat studios, comedy quiz panels and stand-up tours, Bretton was playing Goneril in a Globe production of King Lear.

The other reason for her surprisingly low profile is that she is scrupulously private. She won’t give me her children’s names (which I understand), but she refuses even to reveal the town in which she grew up. “In Hertfordshire” is as far as she will go.

I find her rather winning, even though she makes it clear she’d rather be having root canal work than be talking to me.

We meet in Hitchin (she is prepared to admit that this is near where she lives) in one of those cafés that doubles up as a twee trinkets shop, selling wooden signs that read: “Husband & Dog Missing – Reward for Dog”.

I can see that if you are very private, having people perv over your bum will curdle your camomile tea. It was not just her bottom, mind. As she tried to persuade Mack to provide her with a baby, she was entirely naked and filmed from behind.

“But that’s not my bum, obviously,” she laughs.

I suggest that hundreds of men’s hearts are going to be broken on discovering it was a body double. Did you not want to do it yourself, I ask: “No! No way.” But she did have a say in who her body double was. “I thought I’d go for an upgrade,” she says with a smile.

She is the subject of quite a lot of drooling on the internet, including a compilation video on YouTube – made up of slow-motion clips, set to the soundtrack of You’re Gorgeous. A fan has uploaded it with the message: “This is just because she is so amazing and beautiful.”

The use of a body double is not the only sleight that helps Bretton keep her privacy. She was born Sally Davis, but had to find a new surname when she joined Equity on leaving Central School of Speech and Drama in 1999, to avoid clashing with another Sally Davis.

She had a Saturday job in the Barnet branch of Next. “A friend brought in a book all about the meanings of names and it was the day before, so I had to choose. I was in the staff room flicking through.” She had only got to the Bs before she fell on Bretton. “I just thought, 'Yup, I quite like that.’ It’s totally random, but I thought it sounded quite nice.”

She says she enjoys having a public moniker behind which she can hide. “If only in my brain I do try to keep these two separate sides. It’s another way of keeping under radar. Sally Bretton is the one who does all this stuff,” she gestures to me, my tape recorder and the protective PR woman sitting next to her. “And Sally Davis was the one with all the history.”

Not that there is much history she’ll admit to as Sally Davis. She was, for a while, a child actress, being in some adverts and a Warner Brothers mini-series called Napoleon and Josephine. “I absolutely didn’t have pushy parents. I went to a little drama group on a Saturday. It happened to have an agency attached. And they asked me if I wanted to have a go at auditions.”

She has some qualms about it. “It was sometimes difficult to navigate. I didn’t get teased or bullied, but I was always aware that people knew that about me …” she struggles to explain the uncomfortable sensation of early, minor fame. “I wanted to do it, but I just didn’t necessarily want it to be on television.”

She says that feeling has never left her. “I would much rather go in, faff around and pretend, and come home. That would be my ideal.”

There are not that many actors who enjoy the rehearsals but not the end result. It’s like meeting a chef who loves to cook but hates eating. Since drama school, she’s never stopped working, and she’s appeared in both The Office and Green Wing.

Just as impressively, she has juggled acting with bringing up a very young family with her husband, a photographer. She has three daughters: a four-year-old and twins, aged two.

The Not Going Out team worked filming schedules around her a bit. “They did want to start it fairly soon after I had my first. But they were amazing and said just bring her in. During rehearsals, they’d give me time off to feed her.”

During one of the Christmas specials, Mack would rock one of her twins to sleep in his arms as he read his lines, while she held the other one. “I am genuinely very good friends with Lee. He’s a good mate. His family are all amazing, too.”

Most fans assumed that last year’s Christmas special was the show’s very last, after Mack’s character, Lee, finally managed to make it to the church on time and walk Bretton’s Lucy down the aisle. Once the romantic tension dissipates, most sitcoms wither. Friends knew to call it a day when Ross and Rachel finally got it together.

But the BBC, unwilling to roast the golden Christmas goose, has got Mack to write another Christmas special. Bretton won’t give too much away: “I can say that I am heavily pregnant in it, with our first child – three days overdue. And we go Christmas shopping and it goes terribly wrong.”

She says the show could, in theory, either return sporadically for Christmas specials (as happened with Only Fools and Horses) or even have a new lease of life. “Nothing is absolutely certain. It might develop into a family sitcom. Lee has always been keen to write a family sitcom. And I’d be up for that.”

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