PAULINE McLYNN - actor, novelist, comedian, Mrs Doyle - rings. "I'm bombing up Dame Street at the moment. I had to get the bus because I couldn't get a taxi. Bit tight sweetie, but I'm on my way." She arrives in a white suit apologising for being a little late and orders a sparkling water. "Who are you taping over, " she asks, pointing to the dictaphone. Boy George's mum.

She gasps, "Oh, Mrs O'Dowd. Is she lovely?" And launches into a tangent about interviewing Boy George once for a radio show, "one of the most manly men I have ever met. Incredibly attractive - and he had no make-up or anything on.

He was in combats and I swear to God, talk about testosterone. I was dribbling a bit!"

She talks quickly, and constantly, so much so that it's about 20 minutes in before I even get to ask a question. Tangents, anecdotes, jokes, and lots of laughter make up most of the conversation, which is full of genuine and genial hilarity. She's running around the place today (her "flight shoes" are in her handbag), and for two weeks in total promoting her new (and sixth) book Bright Lights And Promises. "I'll tell you what I'm finding a bit odd at the moment, " she begins after a tale about how she dropped a nice phone down the toilet recently (accidently), "I'd been calling this one 'that difficult sixth novel' as a joke while I was writing it, and now I'm thinking 'oh my God, I've written six books'. How the hell did that happen? It just means time is really passing quickly.

And the grave is beckoning, I think."

More often than not now, she gets stopped in the street by people who have read her books, not for the Mrs Doyle connection - the manic and persistent, but kind-hearted housekeeper in Father Ted. "I always imagine they're stopping me because of the TV stuff, and most particularly Father Ted, and sometimes it's not. More frequently now it's the books.

And the pleasure from that is just incredible. Because that is something I made earlier."

McLynn's schedule is rather punishing. She's contracted to write a book a year, but in reality it's one every nine months. The first draft of her next one is due in February, and luckily, she knows what it's about already.

"The minute you see the book on the shelf, you forget the horror, you forget the pain, you forget banging your head against the wall and making it bleed during the seven years the middle bit took to write. I have to write one a year, but it feels a bit like seven years and I think it's probably just as well that I'm not blessed with too many ideas at once because if I had a choice, I'd be halfway through one book thinking 'this is a very bad idea, I should've chosen the other idea, so what I'll do is scrap that and start the other one'. So it's best to keep going."

Deadlines When she begins to whinge, her husband, Richard, orders her back to the laptop. "I'd go 'It's.

Just. Impossible'. And he would say 'no it's not, and you've a deadline, so get back to that laptop, I don't want to hear it.'

The hand would go up. So, I had to. He pretty much beat me back into doing it, which was just as well because if he didn't, some publishers were going to beat me with a big stick. And possibly cut all my hair off. I don't know what I signed in the beginning, but there are some very strict clauses in there if you miss the deadline, " she wags her finger laughing.

But apart from being a bestselling author, and acting in Jennifer Saunders's acclaimed series Jam and Jerusalem (which is returning for a second series) and performing in Fiona Looney's play Dandelions (also another one of those on the way according to McLynn), she's currently caring for her two elderly cats, which she attests are both over 100 years old in cat years. "Mrs G - she's grey. Cats have a hundred names each, so she'd be GG or Geezy or The G Spot, she was once called. I sort of stole her and her name was Spot before that. The other one is called Snubby and she has one eye and no teeth and she's really smelly at the moment. She's kind of losing the ability to keep herself just so. She's very happy as long as she's eating. And she forgets immediately that she has eaten, so she has to eat again. It's just a cycle of eating and shitting for her. She's not getting as many cuddles as she used to either because she's really shitty. But I now have cat wipes and everything and cat shampoo. I only used one on her once when there was an emergency and she didn't like it. And she hates being dipped into the hand basin even worse, " she sighs, "like myself some days, she doesn't want to put water on her body. You know those days, 'I'm not going to see anyone, sure there's no need'. I might melt, " McLynn puts on her best Wicked Witch of the West voice, "I'm melting." She pauses for breath. "I realise that I haven't let you ask any questions yet."

Mrs Doyle It's impossible not to mention Mrs Doyle. There's very little of the character in her - maybe her voice on occasions, and definitely in the reaction she gets from people, notably the giggling young waiter who handed us a bowl of nuts out of the blue ("This is more important than anything else, " McLynn whispers when they arrive, "we got something free.") "I just think she's so lovely, " she says, reflecting on Mrs Doyle. "When I see it on the television, I don't see me, I see them. I don't see us at all in it. They were great days.

You couldn't not be proud of it." It will be 10 years next year since the last episode of Father Ted was filmed, yet it remains probably the most loved, and certainly the most talked-about and quoted Irish comedy ever. "People honestly wouldn't mention it unless they loved it. They're loving it even more as the years go on, it's just incredible, " she says. "When we were doing the last series, there were billboards all around London with us on them, and I just couldn't look.

There was one very close to the house where my brother and my sister-in-law, who until very recently put a roof over my head in London, lived. The kids just thought that it was hilarious there was a huge big poster of me beside the house. So we thought that was the height of fame, and now it's huger than it ever was."

Aging is also on the agenda.

She has her opinions on the possibility of plastic surgery.

"I've only been to LA once, and everybody looks so startled. It's because they've had the eyes done. They start with the eyes and then they start pulling everything up to meet them.

Whatever about being beautifully lit in the studio, the sun is very, very harsh. The sun does nobody any favours. And the older ones, these old crones who have been around forever with manicured claws and they are pulled so high. It's like Sharon Osbourne says that Ozzy says about her, it's a wonder she hasn't got a beard she's been pulled up so far."

She's extra-reflective following the death of her father from a massive stroke the year before last. "It was absolutely unnecessary. He himself, I'm sure would prefer to be alive, although not with anything wrong with him. If he couldn't have come back 100%, he would've been a demon about it. Even a slur in his speech, he would not have been happy. He went the way he would've liked, but I'm sure many years before he had any intention of going. People would ask us what age he was when he died and we'd say '35' because in his head, he never got past there. He was 69 as it turns out. It really puts things into perspective. At the moment, I seem to do nothing but go to other people's parent's funerals. My mother, touch wood, has loads left in her. We've another decade? myself and Richard in the house, if there's something we don't want to do, he'll say 'life is long, let's not do that'" she laughs.

She thoroughly enjoyed acting in Dandelions, despite the fact that during the previews, in moments where McLynn and the cast thought the audience would be crying their eyes out, they were rolling in the aisles with laughter. As for the playwright, she has nothing but the utmost respect. "I laugh like a drain at stuff that she writes. A great night out for me would be to have Fiona Looney on my arm. And she wrote that she reserved the right to get under a pile of coats at a party with me in one of her columns, and I thought that's as great a compliment that I am every going to receive. What a lovely lady."

Winding up, McLynn is worried that when I listen back to the tape, all I'll be able to hear is laughter and her propensity to say "y'know" a lot. So does Sonia O'Sullivan, I remark. "Ah, me and Sonia, " she says in a dreamy voice. "We have been mistaken for one another, clearly for other reasons. If you saw me run down Grafton Street - a gazelle. Not a lot of people know that, " she laughs. "Oh, the thought! Too many moving parts I'm afraid. I'd knock meself out. I used to do a bit of Irish dancing when I was a kid, and I was happy enough. I couldn't do the heavy dancing at all, but I was quite light on my feet. And then I grew, " she pauses, "tits, basically. And sports bras hadn't made it to Ireland. Too many moving bits. It could've been me, not Jean Butler. I might have been Michael Flatley maybe. Better comparison there." With that, she's off to launch the book, "please come if you want to drink warm white wine, " and runs off somewhere else.