The teacher took us to see it at Stratford and I remember Eric Porter, Alan Howard, Michael Williams and being completely blown away by it. I worked with Eric Porter on Jewel in the Crown and I remember sitting opposite him and I couldn’t believe that he was there, Eric Porter, who had been my major inspiration, with these incredibly long, beautiful hands, and I remember being mesmerised by these hands and just wanting to say to him `I’m here today because of you’. He was wonderful.”As Jewel in the Crown draws to its conclusion at the end of August, Nice Sarah will disappear, to be replaced by Rose, as Gold (the third series of Band of Gold) is screened in October. In the meantime, Geraldine will retire to her “little house” in Sussex with Eleanor and her husband Jo Blatchley, a film producer and director at Rada. AfterGold, James will reappear on screen in a new series of Kavanagh QC, scheduled for next January. “My opposing character to Rose is my wonderful QC in Kavanagh, Helena Harker. So I became the clown in order to have an identity and at the age of 13 they put me into acting.

“Very early on there were the girls who were good at singing, at the arts, or mathematics or languages, and I wasn’t good at anything I didn’t shine. When she was a baby, I didn’t work until she was about 15 months old, and by the time I went back to work I was going up the wall. I realised, there’s a bit of me that is nourished by acting, which is kept at bay when I’m at home being a mum. It’s phenomenal to do both, but I can’t choose.”The actress in James was born at boarding school in Berkshire, where she felt miscast. I did get very alarmed on one location when we were filming outside a junior school, and somebody said `This is where pimps will identify their likely candidates, and start working on them.’ Now if they’re strong, secure children with loving families, then they’re not going to be taken in by that – I hope.”Does Eleanor feel insecure, with her mother away so often? “Well, it does get tougher for her as she gets older, because she’s more aware. Having a 12-year-old daughter, Eleanor, brings it sharply into focus for her “That whole pimp thing is so disgusting. They’ll seduce very young girls literally by giving them sweets Buying them nice clothes.

Encouraging them, developing their sexuality when they’re far too young.”Did it strike a chord when her character Rose discovered, in the second series, that her estranged daughter was a hooker? “I could imagine what it was like for Rose But I don’t relate it to Eleanor very much. In my experience, almost all of these women have been abused So they already think of themselves as complete rubbish. The fact that they go off with a man who starts hitting them around somehow fits in with their lives.”James is most scathing of the pimps who lure young schoolgirls into the game. It ain’t a glamorous life by any means.”You are completely vulnerable; if he whips a knife out.. no wonder the girls fear for their lives They have such low self-esteem. Somebody turns up who is deeply repellent physically, and smells, and wants you to do appalling things, and you’re so cold you do it. That was very startling, to realise what it would be like, for me,” she emphasises, “not to be in control of how I present myself.”Researching Rose brought James into contact with prostitutes in Bradford’s Lumb Lane red-light area where she heard all the gruesome details of life on the streets.”We see them at home making a cup of tea and saying `Christ, it’s tough out there’ and we realise what it would be like to work in those clothes, in winter, getting into hot cars for 10 minutes and getting thrown out again having made 10 quid, stuffing it into your bra and wandering on to the next street corner.