BROOKSIDE'S hard-gambling Rosie Banks is a distant memory for Northern lass Susan Twist.

The Channel Four soap actress has just set out on her first theatre tour in three years and is looking forward to wooing the crowds at Preston's Guidhall.

Susan is starring as the sinister Milady de Winter in the Phil Woods play The Three Musketeers.

"The sense of humour in the north is different to the south," she says. "I remember touring with Alan Bleasdale. His Liverpudlian sense of humour really tickled the audience."

And Susan finds her latest co-star, famous Yorkshire actor Brian Glover, to be on her wavelength. "We get on very well and he's fantastic to work with."

But touring is no easy life. "It's so exhausting because we're rehearsing all the time and the travelling really takes it out of you.

"I'm looking forward to performing at Preston because I can commute from my home in Manchester."

Susan admits her two-and-a-half year stint on Brookside did make her a little worried about taking to the stage again.

"It's a different routine in television," she says. "It's technically more difficult and less natural. In the theatre you can improvise and you must adapt to each audience."

Susan's acting career took off after leaving LAMDA drama school in 1978. Her list of theatre credits grew to include Shakespeare plays, the lead in Educating Rita, Mrs Mullins in Carousel and Polya in Breaking The Silence.

But then Susan decided to head back up north and make her base in Manchester.

"I love it up here," she says. "I feel at home in the north west."

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