Sandra Dickinson delighted to be Singin' in the Rain again

And she has been with it, on and off, pretty much ever since.

The latest tour now brings the show to Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre from June 14-18.

“I just loved it in Chichester. The two main leads were fantastic and Jonathan was a wonderful director, very inspiring. He is very willing to hear your views and work with your ideas and not be at all dictatorial. He is just very welcoming and creative and it was a lovely time.

“I was in the original and then I was in it for two years in London and then they asked me if I would do the tour. I just found I needed to do something else at that point so a very dear friend of mine played my part.”

But it is lovely to be back now, particularly as the production took them to Japan earlier this year. Sadly, though, they got caught up in Covid isolation: “But we then eased back into the wide world and now this particular company that we have got is just lovely. It is the sweetest bunch of people. I'm the oldest in the cast and there is this whole lot of brilliant young talent but they are really very very sweet to me.

“What is interesting is that in this particular tour some of the characters are played by different people along the way.”

For Southampton, for instance, they have got Strictly’s Kevin Clifton coming back in as Cosmo Brown.

“It is amazing how they manage to do it. I think they're just geniuses to be able to come in from one show to another.”

It's the longest association with a show that Sandra has ever had: “I had quite a lengthy time with I Love Lucy. That was only six years though. I played with three or four different men. It was just two people. But the lovely thing with this is that every time you come back to it you see something new and I just love working. I'm just very happy to do anything.

Fortunately during lockdown Sandra had the chance to do The Batman: “And that was really all I had except I think I did one voice-over towards the end of it all. But otherwise it was really grim and I got no help from anybody financially. I did get very frustrated but doing The Batman was really good. My scenes were with Robert Pattinson and Andy Serkis and I really couldn't have asked for two better people.

“Someone came to make sure that I didn't have Covid and then gave me a pass and I masked up and then I was taken to make-up and then I was masked up again. Everybody was very careful. I managed to escape Covid for more than two years but then I got it when we got to Canterbury with this show and all the cast started falling. I went off for two weeks but I'm feeling much better now.”