Shobna Gulati speaks ahead of Wolverhampton theatre performance - interview

We've all had our hearts broken, hidden dark secrets or found ourselves hitting a lowest low.

Performers who tap into raw emotions – and most people's lie just below the surface – also tap into rivulets of salty tears.

But making people laugh? That's another kettle of oysters. To invoke spontaneous laughter, to use happiness and mirth to temporarily cut an audience's ties between the flotsam and jetsam of their day to day lives – now that's a skill.

To make someone laugh, a performer has to bypass the feelings of guilt, regret, confusion, stress or tiredness that accompany most real-life situations.

Which is why the beautiful – but don't call her 'beautiful' because she's painfully shy – Shobna Gulati is one of Britain's finest.

The Oldham actress has been making the nation laugh (and cry) since her first appearances alongside Victoria Wood and Smethwick's own Julie Walters on Dinnerladies. Her comedy bones have helped to raise just the right eyebrow at just the right angle, to say just the right punchline at just the right moment or to pull just the right expression at just the right second ever since.

Shobna enjoys making people laugh, one of the many reasons why her latest role is the perfect one for her.

"As an actor and comedy actor, it's much harder to make someone laugh than to make them cry. When people cry, it's because they've connected with something that's already inside them, some hidden tragedy or grief.

"But when they laugh, it's completely involuntary. It's not based on anything they know or already feel. It's just spontaneous. It's the hardest thing of all."

And it's something that Shobna's been doing for a lifetime. She'll be doing precisely that when she takes the lead role in Meera Syal's Anita and Me at Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre from February 14 to 18. The much-loved novel by the Wolverhampton writer is hitting the road for a UK tour, following a sell-out run at Birmingham REP and Stratford East in 2015.

The poignant coming-of-age semi-autobiographical tale follows Meena, a young girl growing up in the only Punjabi family in a 1970s Black Country mining village. Meena spends her days happily getting into scrapes with the other local children until one day the impossibly cool Anita enters her life.

Shobna was delighted to land the role. "I've wanted to work on Meera's work for some time. Meera and I seem to have missed each other for one reason or another, but I've admired her work greatly over the years.

"I didn't read the book when it first came out, I don't know why. But it's a great role and it's one that I identify with strongly."

Shobna is politeness personified. A charming, thoughtful and engaged actor, she sees parallels between the life that Meera led and her own.

"There are similarities, yes. Though my mother was born in England in 1940, she went back to India because of the War then came back out again when she was married. And in the play, Daljit comes here with her husband to make a fresh start because they are keen to educate their children in England.

"My parents were extremely forward thinking and wanted us all to do well. There's four of us in total, three girls and a boy, and my parents were very keen on educating us. If we were going to be born here, they wanted us to be part of England's cultural life."

With her mother's support, Shobna immersed herself in culture. There was always a song on in the house and her mother took her to dance class from the age of seven, to study Indian classical dance. Later, she featured in a number of pop videos by dance bands like Technotronic and in Boy George's hit Bow Down Mister. She became a young, single parent and against all odds developed a creative career.

"That was all I wanted to do. In my late teens, I joined a theatre group in Manchester and we'd do comedy sketches. Then I got involved with Peshkar, in Oldham, a community theatre group.

"I worked with a dance company and we ended up at the bicentenary of the French Revolution. We ended up dancing down the Champs-Élysées."

Her love of arts had stemmed from those formative experiences, as a girl of seven or eight. "Mother took me to the theatre, to the panto or Oldham rep. As I grew into a teenager, I started going to the Royal Exchange.

"I am painfully shy and one of the ways to get me out of my shell was to encourage me to be artistic.

"My parents were surprised when I told them I wanted to make it my career. They were worried that I wouldn't sustain myself because artists are generally not well off. They also feared the lack of opportunity for a non-white dancer. But there's been 32 years of professional work, so I'm doing okay."

Performing gave Shobna the chance to escape. She loved stories and could wrap herself in them, escaping her shyness by becoming someone else.

Dinnerladies changed everything. She landed the role of the dim, forgetful Anita following three auditions. She was skint at the time and missed her train home. "I was distraught. I had no money for the bus. I was a jobbing actor and single parent. I had nothing. But the guard took pity on me and told me I could get on. He said: 'go into first class, it's fine. You're going to travel this way for the rest of your life'.

"He meant it metaphorically, of course."

The guard was right, however. Dinnerladies was a remarkable experience during which Shobna learned from some of Britain's greatest talents.

Victoria, Julie, Andrew Dunn, Thelma Barlow and Anne Reid became friends and helped to nurture Shobna and Maxine Peake, who were the cast's newbies.

"I learned from the masters," Shobna admits. "We developed strong bonds over the years. When Victoria passed away, we all met up again. Maxine came to my big birthday last year – (like all beautiful ladies, Shobna was 21 of course) – and we made a promise that we'd always be in touch."

Other big roles followed. Shobna featured in Eastenders and was then signed up for Coronation Street, her much-loved role as Sunita.

She's appeared in numerous films and TV shows, from Loose Women, where she was a panellist, to Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, Have I Got News For You, Countdown and Celebrity MasterChef.

More recently, the comedy character actor has been back on the road, starring in Grease before taking on Anita and Me.

"I'm a character actor. I have to be something completely different from me," she says.

And it works. Frequently, Shobna will appear in a role that confounds expectation and defies the typecast of Corrie's Sunita.

"People often say, 'I didn't realise it was you'. But isn't that the point of being an actor? I find it hard just being me. So if I take on a character, I go with it completely.

"I am still hoping that somewhere down the line a casting director will have a nice drama on TV, you know, where someone will think 'Shobna can do that'. It would be lovely to be the story.

"The public have loved some of the characters I've played. They've really fed into people's lives. But my CV is so diverse. There's been a remarkable range of roles."

By Andy Richardson