Alien Annette so pleased to be the moan attraction

Actress Annette Badland has appeared in just about every British TV series of note to be screened over the last 20 years, including Coronation Street, Cutting It and, most recently, Bad Girls. However, to school-children throughout the city, the 56-year-old is best known as Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen, an alien body-snatcher with a zip in her forehead from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius, in Doctor Who.

Thankfully Badland will leave her Slitheen body-suit at home when she appears at the Festival Theatre tomorrow in Grumpy Old Women Live, in which three furious females take to the stage for a hilarious 90-minute rant that has been described as "theatrical HRT".

Written by Jenny Eclair with a middle-aged female audience in mind, the show returns by popular demand, and once again asks: Have you reached that certain age? Are you more likely to be shaking your rolling pin than your booty? And, are you a little bit hot, a little bit hairy?

When Grumpy Old Women Live first toured to Edinburgh late last year, Eclair ranted alongside Birds Of A Feather star Linda Robson and Dillie Keene. This time, she is joined by Badland and baby grump, Musselburgh-born I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here contestant Rhona Cameron, who Badland is quick to point out isn't the only member of the cast with Scottish connections.

"I'm really looking forward to coming up to Edinburgh because I've got family there, Rhona's not the only Scot in the group," she smiles.

"My mum came from Loanhead and I still have aunts and cousins and family there."

Badland herself was born and raised in Birmingham. "My mum's name was Susan Ramsay, although she was known to everyone as Pearl. She came down to Birmingham during the war and started working in a munitions and aircraft factory where she met my dad.

"I never actually lived in Loanhead for any length of time myself, but all through my childhood we would visit twice a year. We used to come up for Hogmanay and for summer holidays. I'm very proud of my Scottish side."

Her undying memory of those childhood visits is of her grandmother's tablet. Laughing, she recalls: "My Scottish granny was very much the village cook and used to do all the wedding cakes and birthday cakes for everybody. And she would always send us back to Birmingham with these little metal Oxo cube tins filled with tablet - instant heart attack material.

"I also have great memories of visiting the zoo and the castle, but more than anything I remember there being a different nature in the people, a generosity and a warmth that was very different from England and the Midlands, and certainly now from London."

Generosity and warmth were certainly emotions lacking in Badland's Doctor Who role. In three episodes her character was transformed from a mild-mannered civil servant into a monster that could change appearance by unzipping its forehead.

Putting on her most evil guffaw, Badland says: "That was a fabulous part. Originally I was asked to do two episodes, there was never any mention of the third, Boomtown. However, while I was working on the first two Russell Davis, the producer, decided to write me my own episode, which was a gift.

"He's a bit of a hero of mine, because as Margaret Blaine I ran the gamut from horrific to sad to sexy. Although I did end up as a little egg with a Russian hair do."

While her character may have been on an emotional roller-coaster, for children everywhere it was simply terrifying. And many are still very wary of her, she reveals.

"They're intrigued when they spot me. What happens is they tend to get very excited because they know that I'm off the telly, but don't get too close. They don't come within four feet of me unless their parents push them - and then they do look for the zipper in my forehead."

Playing such roles is Badland's idea of heaven, and she admits: "I'm never cast as a normal person, but I love it. I would hate to be doing the same standard things all the time. I couldn't bear it. I love investigating and making real those extreme characters, because you still have to find the truth in them to make them real."

But it's a challenge of a different kind she'll be facing on the stage of the Festival Theatre tomorrow evening. "My very first job when I started acting back in 1972 was on the Edinburgh Festival with The Actors Company. Then I toured to the King's a few years ago in a production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but Grumpy Old Women Live is very different. It's like stand-up. It's not a play, it's an entertainment.

"I like Jenny's writing and the thought of doing it fascinated me because it was something I had never ever done. I'm still terrified because the nature of it is so different to a play.

"It's like having a natter with 1000 people. Usually as an actor you're trying to pretend that the audience isn't there, so it's very different. But it's great to be able to vent your spleen and make people laugh. It's great therapy and a real release valve."

And certainly much better than having a zipper implanted in your forehead.

• Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, tomorrow, 7.30pm, 20-21.50, 0131-529 6000