Katherine Kelly knew she'd hit the big time when fans snubbed a member of the Royal Family and an England rugby player to get HER autograph instead.
As her Corrie character Becky Grainger becomes the 50th barmaid to pull pints in the Rovers Return, she recalls the day she went to a rugby match at Twickenham with her old friend Mike Tindall.
That's the Mike Tindall who plays for England and whose girlfriend is Zara Phillips, granddaughter of the Queen and 11th in line to the throne.
But it was Katherine, 28, who drew the crowds. She recalls: "Zara was running up to me with all these little kids saying, 'This person wants your autograph and this person wants your autograph.'
"I thought, 'Hang on, this is really, really weird. They should be wanting your autograph - what's going on?' But they weren't interested in Mike and Zara. It was a case of, 'Excuse me, we need Becky's autograph.' It was hilarious!" It's hard to imagine scruffy cafe worker Becky rubbing shoulders with royalty, but as our amazing photoshoot shows, Katherine's real life is a world away from her rough-andready TV role.
While Becky is a chain-smoking former jailbird, Katherine trained as an actress at RADA, before spending 18 months working for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
"Mike Tindall and I have been friends since school," she says.
"I've always got on well with him and Zara is lovely too. I've met her two or three times and she's really down-to-earth.
"They both know who Becky is, but I don't know if they're regular Corrie viewers or not - they're so outdoorsy.
They're great fun, but we don't really talk about our jobs. I don't know much about rugby and they don't know much about acting, so we talk about other things.
"Unfortunately I haven't seen them for ages - I'm in Manchester now and Mike's in Gloucester. Before my work schedules were so demanding we went out a lot, but we still text each other all the time and try to meet up when we can."
While Katherine has already proved a crowd-pleaser, she'll attract even more attention when she becomes the new Rovers barmaid later this month.
Landlady Michelle Connor is shortstaffed, so she invites Becky to help her out. Becky jumps at the chance. While she still continues with her day job working with Roy Cropper in the cafe, her evenings are now spent doing shifts in the pub.
What Michelle doesn't know is that this week Becky bedded her bloke Steve. The truth is bound to come out... so fireworks are guaranteed.
"The pressure is on anyway, but when you're the 50th barmaid it's a huge thing to live up to," she says. "It's a milestone and you're in the record books, so I'm really flattered. The Rovers is the heart of the show and so to be part of that makes me feel tremendously proud. It's a real accolade."
Luckily, Katherine knows a thing or two about pulling pints. Before hitting the big time she worked as a barmaid at the Miners Rest pub in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. "I used to pull pints for Stan Richards who played Seth in Emmerdale - that was his local," she says.
"I had a full day's training on where to hold the glass, how to pull a pint and the difference between the pumps.
"The locals would hand drinks back to me if I hadn't got it right and I'd have to start again.
"At 11 o'clock every night all the pork pies and black pudding come out - it's a really good place - a bit like the Rovers. But I could never have imagined back then I'd end up in the real thing."
Becky first appeared on Coronation Street in 2006 for a four-month spell as a former cellmate of factory worker Kelly Crabtree. She tried to frame Kelly for theft and seduce her boyfriend and eventually left in disgrace.
But her bad-girl character proved such a hit with viewers that producers brought her back later that year - and within six months she was being considered as a new Rovers barmaid. "They've toned Becky down a bit since then and they've been talking about it since this time last year," Katherine reveals.
"The last producer told me he loved the idea of having a girl who could climb over the bar and punch someone. I didn't really believe it until I was actually standing behind the bar, pulling my first pint."
Despite her delight at getting behind the most famous bar in Britain, Katherine refuses to take the new job for granted.
And she is preparing herself for a backlash after her character's bad behaviour.
Advertisement - article continues below »
"It's all up in the air," she says candidly.
"The producers listen to the viewers and if they don't like Becky behind the bar, she won't last behind the bar.
I'm quite prepared for that, so we'll just have to see, but at the moment I'm really looking forward to it... it's exciting times."
Katherine lives in Manchester with her boyfriend of four years, film and theatre actor Oliver Williams, who she met at the RSC.
She says they are very happy together but have no current plans to get married. "I'd really like kids one day," she says. "But I'm happy with things the way they are. I'm not particularly bothered about getting married."
Katherine grew up in Barnsley and went to school in nearby Wakefield. Her dad John is a former miner who re-trained as a nurse and her mum Anne is a nursing manager.
Her parents met at their local amateur dramatics society and performed on the local club circuit as a musical duo.
Katherine is the oldest of their four children. Her brother Sean, 26, is a doctor, Chris, 24, is a construction engineer and Grace, 18, is at Leeds College of Music.
Katherine's role in Coronation Street has gone down a storm with her family, who are all avid fans.
"They watch it religiously," Katherine says. "They thought the RSC was okay, but my Nan said, 'The RAC? What thee 'eck's that?!' Now I'm in Coronation Street she really feels I've made it."
Katherine graduated from RADA in 2001 and, after working in theatre for two years, landed her first TV role as shelf-stacker Sharlene in Last of the Summer Wine.
After that came parts in Silent Witness and The Royal, before she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2004.
"It was great, I was playing all these beautiful characters, including a princess, and now I'm playing Becky who couldn't be more different!
"I know loads of Beckys, but she's not based on one person. For example the way she smokes, wafting her cigarette around, is how a friend of mine smoked.
"And in the early days a lot of what she said was from my Nan - her old-fashioned phrases, such as 'Nah then', 'Ah seh' and 'Mi old love'. The writers put them in the script now."
Becky's chain-smoking is a challenge for non-smoker Katherine. With outdoor scenes filmed back-to-back on the same day and several takes of every scene, she can end up puffing on 100 cigarettes in a day. "I smoke herbal ones.," she says.
"They're great because they give off a lot of smoke, so they're quite theatrical, but I pity the camera crew because they stink. And they taste awful."
For Katherine, our photoshoot provided a rare opportunity to look her natural beautiful self. She says: "When I'm Becky, I look in the mirror as little as I possibly can - I don't want to be reminded. I have Becky's dark roots painted in every day - then I wash them out when I get home.
"In a way, it's really liberating to look crap, but other times I can't bear to think about it, which is why it's been really nice to do these pictures."
Becky will have a new wardrobe when she starts work behind the bar. Katherine says: "At night in the Rovers she'll be getting dressed up because that's what girls do up North.
"I've been shopping with the costume department and we're going for an Amy Winehouse-esque look.
I've got a whole backcombed beehive thing going on and big, thick black eyeliner. We've also bought loads of bras in different colours because her bra strap will always be showing and we've got lots of cheap, loud strappy, sparkly tops.
"She'll have that slightly dirty rocker look about her. There's nothing subtle about it at all!"
Best you enjoy the photoshoot's more sophisticated look while you can, Katherine...
