On the eve of the final series of As Time Goes By, Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer chat about the fun, the success - and all those out-takes.

A muggy, fume-filled rehearsal room, in a church half underneath a noisy flyover in West London, isn't the most likely place to find an Oscar winning Dame - the actress recently voted the most revered person in Britain after the Queen. In the poll, she was only five points behind Her Majesty and easily beat the likes of Prince Charles and Tony Blair.

'I've had the mickey taken out of me ever since,' says Dame Judi Dench, throwing her hands to her head in embarrassment. 'I didn't actually see the article, but I was rung by a friend of mine first thing that morning, so the sending up started very early that day. Then I came into work and this lot started on me. I don't know how we got through rehearsals.'

'You're not revered in here love!' jokes her co-star Geoffrey Palmer, as he sits next to her. 'He's very revering really,' says Judi, leaning forward with a stage whisper. 'He just doesn't like to show it.' They both fall about laughing.

We meet on the makeshift living-room rehearsal set of 'As Time Goes By', the popular BBC1 sitcom about a slightly batty middle-class couple, Jean and Lionel, who rekindled their teenage romance after a chance meeting in middle age.

The premise may be a bit whimsical, but the barbed chemistry of Dench and Palmer lifts the script to a whole new level. And it's clear as they banter away that the veteran actors enjoy each other's company off screen, too. This is the ninth and final series of 'As Time Goes By' and at last it looks as though Jean's daughter, Judith, and her boyfriend, Alistair, are going to be walking down the aisle.

'I think the reason the series is so popular is that there aren't many sitcoms like this any more,' says Geoffrey. 'However, there are lots of sitcoms where people are calling each other all the names under the sun, with plenty of bad language and being sick all over the floor,' Judi chips in: 'Whereas we just do that when the cameras stop rolling.'

So how easy was it to slip back into their eccentric characters? 'The writer, Bob Larbey, makes it very straightforward. He knows these characters and has got Jean and Lionel so much in his mind that it is all there for you on the page,' says Judi, who will be seen as M in the new James Bond film, 'Die Another Day', later this year.

'Saying that, I don't want to become like Jean in real life because I am amazed by her dottiness. She seems to be getting dodgier and dodgier. But maybe I am already like her,' she adds, sipping her bottle of high-vitamin fruit juice.

For Geoffrey, 75, playing crotchety Lionel is yet another character that enables him to use his trademark hangdog expression, put to such good effect as Ben in the classic BBC sitcom, 'Butterflies'. He says 'I've done an awful lot of work where I look pretty miserable. Taxi drivers are always going "Come on mate, it's not that bad!" 'I think it's just the jowls and the sagging face, but I'm not miserable all the time.' The past year has been a corker for Judi, the Yorkshire born grande dame of British theatre, with three major films, 'The Shipping News', 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (out in September) and Iris - for which she won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of writer Iris Murdoch, who had Alzheimer's disease.

She has suffered a difficult period of mourning for her husband of 30 years, Michael Williams, who died of cancer last year. Judi, 68, admits she threw herself into work after Michael's death, but following 'As Time Goes By', she is having a break.

'I am off to Scotland, where I am going to paint and enjoy spending some time with my daughter and my grandson, Sammy, who is very much like Michael. He is the line going on,' she says.

Meanwhile, for Geoffrey, who is married with two grown-up children, there is only one thing on his mind - his 'frightful obsession' with fly-fishing. But there are a couple of radio plays and a possible TV project to get out of the way first.

So, will they miss each other when the series finally comes to an end? 'Oh, yes' says Geoffrey. Before 'As Time Goes By' I was told that everyone loves Judi. I thought, "I'll find something wrong with her" But I couldn't. She has this incredible goodness, which makes her sound boring, but she's not. Judi has a tremendous sense of fun, yet if anyone has a problem, they are taken very discreetly under her wing.'

Judi is equally upbeat about Geoffrey: 'He is the real pro at comedy and we've had so many laughs making this show.'

Indeed, most of those laughs have ended up as out-takes on 'Auntie's Bloomers', says Geoffrey: 'One of the great things about playing opposite Judi is that sometimes she is not totally on top of her lines,' Judi laughs: 'They could fill a whole bloomin' programme with our cock-ups. I certainly wouldn't feel very revered then!'

Thanks so much to Marie Wilson for sending me this article which appeared in he July 6-12, 2002 edition of TV Times magazine (UK).

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