The two words Helen Baxendale overuses the most are "normal" and "person". As in: 
"I still want to be a normal person," and: "I want to live a normal life." I've only got Helen's word for this, of course. For all I know, she may listen to Richard Hell and the Voidoids while nailing stoats to the fence in her spare time. But I doubt it. She is 28, likes Space and grew up in Lichfield. That's Lichfield in whoop-de-doop Staffordshire,
famous for the giddy excitement of having a cathedral with three spires. As a teenager, who do you think she fancied? Paul Simonon? Ian McCulloch? No! She fancied bloody Kenny Dalgleish. "He was number 7," she says with girlish relish, "always the sexiest spot on the pitch..." 

Her figure is more curvaceous than her on-screen image and athletic achievements (she ran for Staffordshire) might suggest. Don't knock "normal", though: it landed Helen the role of Emily in Friends, screening on Sky this month (and C4 in the autumn). She's the nice English one who ends up being whisked off by Ross for a dirty weekend. And all in her first episode, the minx. 

What is it about Friends - that show your girlfriend watches? You scoff at first: the "message from our sponsors" - a prurient triumvirate of phone-dodging Wella witches. And yet some-how it sucks you in through a kind of involuntary osmosis.
"They'd been trying to find this English girl for a long time," says Helen. "I'd auditioned by video but it came to nothing. I was a bit relieved because I didn't really want to go to America." But as she says, "Everything comes to you when you least expect it." She went over to LA for a working holiday to publicise her lead role in the USA-friendly, PD James based TV series An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. "We were only going to stay in LA for two days because I'd heard it was a shit hole," she says. "We were going to go to San Francisco for a week and then to New York, because I'd never been to America before." Any plans for a USA fly-drive beano were cut short when she went to see the Friends people on her agent's advice. And, by Jove, they wanted her, there and then. "On holiday, you're more of a normal person, and that's what people want," she muses when asked to account for Warner Brother's on-the-spot decision. And they don't mess about - our girl found herself on a non-stop roller-coaster leading straight on to the Friends sound stage.

The next two weeks of Helen's "holiday" were spent getting a working visa, which entailed leaving the US via Mexico and then re-entering it. 
"They'd put on this bloody Learjet to fly me to Burbank; it was quite James Bond-y but I was too petrified to enjoy it." (Her two main fears are flying and dying, in that order.) "In Burbank, I was taken straight into the studios at 11pm and immediately rehearsed this scene with them all. It was surreal." Helen, to be honest, isn't an ardent follower of the sitcom, so she wasn't too overwhelmed by the sensational six. Did they "hang" together? "They were really helpful to me. But they're all such huge stars that they can't really go out. They're really close. It's quite hard trying to break into that inner circle, so I didn't try." This is evident in that she still describes the boys by their character names, hence: "Ross is a lovely bloke". And the girls? Well, Jennifer Aniston has "beautiful skin". But what are they like in real life? Are they funny? Long pause. "Not particularly. After watching them do it, I realised just how brilliant they are. They're excellent comedians." Well, we didn't expect them to be
wisecracking all the time. "Chandler does," she whispers, with a degree of dudgeon, "and Joey's really fat."

Judge for yourself. In the first Baxendale episode, Joey is caught in Charlton Heston's shower (sorry, not a pleasant image, is it?) and displays an acreage of flesh more commonly associated with the business end of a harpoon.
"It's so different. Friends has 13 writers - they give you a script on Monday and by Friday it's totally changed. Plus, I'd never done anything with a studio audience before. You come in on Friday night at 5pm and it can go on 'til 2.3Oam in the morning and the audience are really into it.
The whole time." She shakes her head in disbelief "And they keep the studios at something like minus six. It's freezing in there because they think it makes people laugh more."

So are you going to get a Friends haircut? Will American girls be asking for an "Emily"? "No bloody way," she splutters. They didn't actually cut mine, they just 'do' you... Ultra make-up, ultra big hair." But not ultra-accented. Helen is determined not be the stereotypical Brit lass with the Dick Van Dyke voice: It's watched over here - by loads of my mates! I just want her to be a normal English girl. I think they eventually understood that English people don't go around saying 'smashing' and 'super'. You're so different anyway, you don't have to pretend."
How are American girls going to cope with you monopolising top "hunk" David Schwimmer? "I don't care!" she says, breezily. I'm giving it away, but sod it: eventually Ross proposes to Emily. "I thought they'd think, 'Why is he going out with this girl with the weird accent? Interloper!' They just went, 'Ahhhh'."
Helen is actually going out with David Elliot, an American-born actor and producer. She is also pregnant. Won't some see this as shooting yourself in the foot, just as your career is rock-eting? "Being an actress is the perfect job to have a child, because you're not working so much of the time - it's not like going to the office and then only seeing them when they're asleep."

In the nest-building spirit, Helen and David have recently bought a new house. Friends must be lobbing money at her. "That's a total fucking lie!" she says. "It hasn't earned me a penny. I got $5,000-and that's quite good as a guest artist. That £3,000! On top of that, you have to pay American tax, then 20 per cent to your agent and manager. Also, they didn't pay for my hotel. So I literally have ended up getting minus money. But who'd say no to it?"
Who indeed? But this is still the woman who swept on to the nation's TV screens at 22 as Dr Claire Maitland in Cardiac Arrest, a form of Casualty-without-the-patients for an audience of bitter, over worked doctors, She was sassy, dominant one might even say cold. Perhaps it's the aquiline nose ("my one distinctive feature") but it is surprising to see Helen in comedies, particularly as she "doesn't consider herself to be naturally hilarious".
Yet back in the UK, she's filming another comedy with, among others, The Fast Show's John Thompson. The pilot of Cold feet won the Golden Rose of Montreux. It could be described as an English version of Friends, in that it's about six youngish peo-ple, three couples. "I play a bit of a flibbertigibbet. But it's more real; the people are more... normal." Recently a tabloid sent a reporter up to Lichfield to try and
doorstep Helen's mum and dad. Despite her five years of fame, she still suffers uncomfortable twinges from media attention, veering wildly from wariness to complete candour. "I hope it doesn't change with Friends and I'll be allowed to sink back into obscurity. I don't want to be overexposed... but then why am I doing this?" flicks through the Polaroid's from this shoot, then sighs and says a very normal thing indeed: "My boyfriend will kill me when he sees these pictures..."

Friends with Helen Baxendale is on Thursday at 9pm Sky 1. Cold Feet will be shown on Granada in the autumn.