Ghosts star Martha Howe-Doulgas almost played Charlie Richie's Alison

Martha Howe-Douglas almost played Charlotte Richie's character in 'Ghosts'.

The 43-year-old actress - who eventually ended up in the role of uptight Edwardian Lady Fanny Button - explained that when she and the rest of the BBC sitcom's co-creators were working on previous show 'Yonderland', she had played a similar part to Alison and she's become used to the idea.

She told RadioTimes.com: "For me, personally, the transition from 'Yonderland' to 'Ghosts' was that I got back into playing 'character' because, obviously, in 'Yonderland' I was the sort of Alison character.

"And, because we did three years of that, that kind of felt like my natural... that's where I felt most at home at that point, which is crazy because we started on 'Horrible Histories', where we were playing all these mad characters."

When it came to starting work on 'Ghosts', Martha was open to the idea of taking on Alison, but her co-stars disagreed.

She added: "So when we were doing Ghosts and we were writing it, I was thinking, 'Should I just be the Alison character?'

"And the guys were like, 'No, you have to be a character, you have to come back and play with us'.

"Because when I was the Alison character [in Yonderland], Debbie, I sort of lost that sense... they were all playing the mad characters. Although I played Imperatrix, she wasn't particularly zany."

After so long in 'Yonderland' playing stay-at-home Brummie mum Debbie - who finds out she is a saviour of a fantasty realm with epic characters - Martha had lost some confidence".

She said: "I think I was feeling a bit like, 'can I even do that again?' Because I'd been out of that for so long, just playing a sort of straight woman – and then I played Fanny, and we all know how that ended up!

"Ridiculously extreme, but so much fun. I'm so glad that they said that to me because maybe I'd lost a bit of confidence about doing a 'character' again."