CANDICE Stowe was one of those characters who occasionally wander into Coronation Street in a bit-part role and end up making it their home – and then some.

Poker-straight of hair and pouting of lips, Candice was the original and best soap WAG – one of Audrey Roberts' junior stylists who was determined to land a palace in Cheshire with a Ferrari-shaped pool via her Weatherfield Athletic player boyfriend Warren.

Candice could do high comedy – her stint as a bikini-clad weathergirl being particularly memorable – or full-on drama, according to plotline. She ended up running off as a stylist for Status Quo and is, to this day, in Street fans' imaginations, giving Rick Parfitt wild backcombs.

Since leaving the soap in 2005, actress Nikki Sanderson, 24, has done much to shake off the Candice legacy but she suspects the character will always be with her one way or another.

Not that she minds.

"I think I'll always miss her. She was my first major role and a massive part of my life. She will forever be loved in my heart!" she jokes.

Being a big Corrie fan myself, I spent a few minutes indulging in some Street nostalgia with Nikki.

"I loved it," she sighs. "As an actor you want to be able to play a range of emotions within your character. With Candice it was fantastic. Sometimes she was moody and nasty. Next moment she was crying her eyes out. Then she was doing these really funny, comedic scenes. It was up, down and all over the place."

Has Nikki had any problems with people thinking she's a bubble-head like Candice?

"Some people do presume you're like your character... that Nikki is the same as Candice.

"But I don't mind so much. People see you on screen and that's who they get to know. Sometimes it might be hard to decipher between the person and the character. Whatever they say to you, you know they've been watching the show."

In the intervening four years, Blackpool lass Nikki has landed a role in Heartbeat, posed for lads' mags and won a role in a slasher flick, of which more later.

And, just to top off the crazy diversity, she's in Nottingham next week for her sixth stint in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, alongside fellow Street ex Sally Lindsay.

"They just keep asking me to come back. I don't know why!" she laughs.

"But I love doing it. It's such a fun show. Whenever I'm working on it, I have a really nice time. I would always say yes to Vagina Monologues."

Nikki performs three-and-a-bit of the ten different monologues in a variety of accents – Southern Belle, posh British and her own, which she describes as "broad Northern".

For the grand finale, she's joined by her two co-stars, Kim Medcalf and Sally, who played barmaid Shelley Unwin.

"In Coronation Street our characters didn't work together," says Nikki. "Sometimes you can work with somebody for five years and not really know them that well. So it's nice to work with her and get to know her better."

Like Sally, Nikki has been inundated with offers since her Street exit.

"I've been very lucky that since leaving Corrie I've worked quite consistently," she says.

"It's scary leaving. I was there for six years. I started when I was a child and I stayed until I was 21. You feel, 'Oh my God, what's going to happen? Am I going to work again?'"

Well, she's managed. I ask whether it helped that she'd already made a name for herself outside the programme. Did that help her land on her feet?

"I suppose it's a 50/50 situation. If your name is known within the industry, at least people have seen your work before. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't."

For the past three years, Nikki has focused on her acting career, rather than her other much-talked-of talents.

"I haven't done a lad mag for three years although they keep bringing the pictures out," she says. "I would never rule it out. As long as you're comfortable and you're happy with the pictures that are taken, it's fine. But at the moment I'm happy with my acting."

So is she quite comfortable with the way she looks?

"I'm like everybody else. No one in this world is completely happy with their body but you've got to work with what God gave you."

It's just some of the set-pieces she's gone in for (strutting around in a bikini in front of 12 million viewers and Bradley Walsh on Corrie) suggest quite a degree of confidence.

"It is extremely scary," she admits. "But you're quite lucky you're surrounded by people who are very, very respectful.

"I've done other scenes in different things where I've had to do stuff like that. It's scary. But, as an actor, it's not you that's doing those things, it's your character."

Her latest movie – The Boogeyman 3 – also involved nudity. In it, she was attacked while having a bath.

The film went straight to DVD.

"Some of the papers put, 'She must be disappointed her first film has gone to DVD,' but we knew it was a DVD film before we started filming it. We filmed it in Bulgaria. It was the most surreal, fantastic experience I've had. I really, really enjoyed it."

Would she like to do more movies, then?

"I'm not one of these people who say, 'I'm going to America. I'm doing this, this and this'. Hollywood is such a tough nut to crack and you don't hold your breath but I will work really, really hard just to be successful."

Finally, then, the question all Coronation Street fans want the answer to – would she ever make a Rovers Return back to the cobbles?

"That's a major, 'I don't know'," she says. "You don't know what will happen in the future. Candice was fantastic but you don't know whether she could ever come back or whether she would fit back in with a storyline because quite a lot of people I was working with aren't there any more. You don't know what's going to happen."

The Vagina Monologues runs at the Royal Concert Hall on February 4-15. For more information call 0115 989 5555.