Former high-flying advertising executive and Blind Date winner - Kiki Kendrick spent her working life wanting to be an actress.

It didn't matter that she was with top agencies in London and New York, or that Bobby Kennedy Jnr was a client. The gate-maker's daughter ditched being creative director to tramp the boards, aged 35.

The lavish lifestyle and high incomes vanished as the fledging thespian lost thousands trying to make her way where many had floundered before her.

And gradually, the vivacious brunette, who was told she would triumph in floozy, tart and mistress parts, got herself noticed.

Playing Jackie in smash hit, award-winning serious The Office got her the recognition she needed. Right now, she is realising a dream to tour with renowned Hull Truck Theatre Company.

We talk after her first night in John Godber's latest play Reunion at Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre. Nerves are hard to contend with at every new venue.

"I wait in the wings wishing I was a cashier at Tesco. You get out there and it all changes."

Marketing is in the actress's blood. She had 1,000 fliers printed, showing her in school uniform playing racy Heather Wood. Everyone she knows had one sent. The ploy has produced many bookings for Renuion as it tours the land.

As a kid, Kikki charged 6d. to bemused punters who rolled up to her front garden for the latest home-spun theatrical Kendrick special.

School producers always passed her by.

"I was an ugly kid. My mum didn't start getting attractive until she was 40. She told me my time would come."

Art school proved a palatable alternative to her craving to act and after college, commissions in advertising started to flood in.

The ideas connoisseur made it to top advertising companies like Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty and Abbot Mead Vickers in London.

An early success was with Dr Whites. Kiki's slogan "they're rounded because you are" was, she said, the first sanitary towel ad on television.

A Christmas party in London's Grosvenor House saw her head hunted by Chiat Day based in New York. Two weeks later she had crossed the pond to join the classy agency.

"I became very successful very quickly. I was creative director but kept saying the only thing I wanted to do was act. I was making a lot of money, had a nice flat and car.

"New York was crazy. We worked until midnight most nights. I met Bobby Kennedy while working for a coalition group he was with.

"The city's water was being polluted by hospital waste at the time. I worked on an ad which showed a man urinating, by way of a tap, into a glass of water."

Before leaving for the States, Kiki met her dream man. She hadn't had a boyfriend for five years and the appeal was instantaneous, for both of them.

Cross-Atlantic phone calls were costing up to £400 each but over the two years things waned. When Kiki arrived back in the UK, she discovered he was about to be married.

Persuaded to go on to Blind Date, she never expected to beat off opposition from 900 other hopeful contenders, but ended up with Cilla in a line-up of three stunning women.

"There is nothing like being optimistic, so I forked out £10 for a second-hand wedding dress and veil and went on the show wearing them. I couldn't believe it when I was selected.

"When the screen went back, there was Gerry, a gorgeous black American GI. He ran when he saw the wedding dress.

"We won a wine tasting trip to France. Gerry was teetotal, but we had a fantastic time. My ex-boyfriend's marriage only lasted two weeks and we had just started seeing each other again before Blind Date, otherwise things might have happened with Gerry. He was lovely."

Reality TV the subject of current play Reunion leaves Kiki cold. In fact she hates it. John Godber cleverly deals with the curdling embarrassment and heartache it can conjure.

Kiki is now happily married to her ex boyfriend and the joy at a six-month tour with Hull Truck is tempered by missing her man. Kendal had given a warm welcome and she says the thrill of the theatre means there are no regrets over the career change.

"With hindsight, I'd have done it all differently. I wasted a lot of time and money by not knowing what I was doing."

When John Godber invited her to interview for Hull Truck, she mumbled something about having to go to a wedding, then admitted it was her own.

Coronation Street is the other outstanding goal. Kiki has written herself a script where she appears as Elsie Tanner's long lost illegitimate daughter from Warrington her own home- town.

"I've achieved my first aspiration with Hull Truck and I can't tell you how hard I am working on the other.

"Watch this space," she grins with wide, vampish lips, and disappears off to her B&B in Milnthope Road.

February 13, 2003 10:00