BRITAIN in 1978 viewed through the prism that is Abigail’s Party throws up two very different perspectives. On the one hand, Mike Leigh’s script reveals a group of hopeful aspirationals, gorging on materialism, pineapple-and-cheese-on-sticks party food and warm beaujolais nouveau. It was an optimistic time when newly middle-class families could afford a semi-detached, a Ford Capri and a holiday in Fuengirola. Some however struggled to contain their pretentiousness, a stranger to the reflection in the mirror. And Abigail’s Party is an understanding play about social awkwardness.

On the other hand, playwright Dennis Potter claimed that it was “based on nothing more edifying that rancid disdain, for it is a prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred, about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower middle classes.” Kenneth Williams too saw it as “sneering and braying at suburban people.”

Which is it? Well, perhaps both. But what is undeniably is the story, which also featured as a BBC Play For Today starring Alison Steadman as the acid-tongued Beverly, continues to be massively popular and is still performed around the globe.

Now Jodie Prenger, whose career rocketed after she won reality series I’d Do Anything and landed the West End role of Nancy in Oliver! is in the lead role. And the actress maintains there is more to Abigail’s Party that sociological dissection.

“This is a play about relationships,” says the Blackpool-born performer. “Mike Leigh really picks these people apart. And over the years, relationships and problems don’t alter.”

The story sees Beverly (described by Alan Bennett as “a brutal hostess with shoulders like a lifeguard and a walk to match”) decide to host a party for her newly-married neighbours but calamity ensues. “I’ve been to parties like this,” adds Prenger. “The problems resonate through the decades. There is always someone who behaves badly.”

The actress acknowledges that Beverly is an extreme, hard to like character. “She’s a bit of a monster,” she says. “She’s brazen and she’s scary. But she works because she’s real. I think there’s a bit of Beverly in all of us.

“Yet, Beverly is also a brilliant character to play because she hides this lurking vulnerability. Underneath the bravado lies a very lonely woman. She’s the original desperate housewife. Beverly used to work on the make-up counter and she was very good at her job. But not now. And she doesn’t have children. She’s a bit lost.”

Straight outta Barrowfield: Kevin Brannigan – the man behind Big Angie

What’s undoubtable is that Abigail’s Party is of its time. It’s a period piece, reflecting a time of optimism and perceived opportunity for the lower middle classes. Not like today at all. As such, it couldn’t be repackaged in a contemporary setting.

Prenger says: “It’s about a time when things seemed more important than people for some. Beverly wants to show off her life (and hide the faults) by telling us what she has in her home. These days, people are more likely to do it by Instagram.”

It’s not hard to see why Prenger was cast in the role of a woman with the outer skin of a rhino – but a soft underbelly.

Growing up in Blackpool, where her parents ran a boarding house, Prenger determined to break into showbiz from an early age, (coming second at the disco dancing competitions at Pontins- which left her “gutted”) working on ice skating shows.

She worked as a nail technician and a sales assistant in a curtain shop before taking to the demanding club circuit. At one working man’s club the stage was enclosed in a cage in case disgruntled punters lobbed an ashtray.

Prenger’s weight was always an issue – at one point she was a size 22 – and was once asked not to come back to a local dance class because of it.

Yet, the performer used her size cleverly to increase her public profile. In 2006, she won the second series of reality show, The Biggest Loser, slimming down from 18 stones to just over nine.

But reality TV truly changed her life two years later. “When I got to be Nancy that was it for me,” she says of I’d Do Anything, the search for a Nancy in Oliver!

Prenger, who lives on a farm in Lancashire, with her partner (“We’ve been engaged for about 50 years”) hasn’t stopped working since, playing The Lady of the Lake in the UK tour of the hit musical Spamalot. She’s starred as Miss Hannigan in Annie and Shirley Valentine.

And Prenger frequently sits in for Paul O’Grady and Elaine Paige on their Radio Two shows. “I know it sounds like a Miss World speech but I do all this because I love it all. I do it because one minute you can meet Liza Minnelli and the Queen, yet I also remember getting changed in Strangeways prison before a 45-minute set.”

Were there ever times when she felt like packing it in and going back to work in the nail bar? “Yes, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have thoughts like this. But Nancy came along at the right time and totally changed my life.”

Have there been times when the showbiz world has been a little Beverly excessive? “Oh, aye,” she says in emphatic voice. “I do meet people in TV who don’t have a grasp of reality. And you meet the types who want to do everything for you. I find myself saying, ‘Don’t you go running to get that. I’ve got two legs, you know.’”

She adds, grinning: “ I don’t want looking after. I like looking after others. I’m a feeder. If you can’t be thin, make your friends happy.” #

Like Beverly? “Yes,” gosh,” she says, laughing. “I’m more like her than I thought.”

Abigail’s Party, February 4-9, The Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

Kevin Bridges: What he really thinks about his showbiz contemporaries