JULIA Watson, who is known to millions as Dr Baz Samuels in the BBC's Casualty series, will swap her stethoscope for a string of pearls when she steps on to the stage in Windsor as Lady Chiltern in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.

Julia says: "Lady Chiltern is married to an MP and she is also interested in politics. She is incredibly straight, an honest and honourable woman. She is incredibly moral."

But then scandal breaks out. It comes to light that her husband has had a Jeffrey Archer-type scandal in his past which causes chaos.

Julia says: "She is so uncompromising you do want to smack her a bit and tell her to live in the real world."

And, of course, she is so different from Dr Baz.

"I loved playing Baz, she was great. She got up to such tricks and I loved all the medical stuff too."

Being in such a high profile series did infringe on Julia's personal life.

"On the whole, people I met in the street were very nice. The only problem was that the character Charlie, who was my husband, is so adored by millions that when Baz was horrible to him people didn't like it."

Julia was in the series for four years. She left because the pangs of leaving her daughter Hannah, who is now ten years old, became too overpowering.

"The series filmed for ten and a half months in Bristol and I lived with my husband and Hannah in London. We didn't want to move to Bristol.

"I just felt by the time I left the series I had been away half her life and I thought that's enough really. I felt I needed to be home more.

"I was fed up seeing someone else bring up my child. I wanted to have a go at it myself no matter how amateur or bad I was at it."

The job of juggling work and motherhood has been a strain on Julia.

"It is so difficult. The pull is so much but I don't want to stay at home all the time. Sometimes I tell Hannah that I'm not going to be away for long but I have to do it for me."

Julia will be away for about five weeks during the tour of An Ideal Husband.

"I have an au pair to look after Hannah and my husband works from home."

Julia is married to poet David Harsent.

"He writes other things to make money. Being a poet is not financially rewarding."

Unfortunately for Julia he doesn't write love poems. "But he does write me bits of doggerel - he calls them doggerel."

An Ideal Husband is at the Theatre Royal Windsor from January 17 to 27