WHEN Neve McIntosh was a youngster growing up in Edinburgh, she was “mad daft” about horses and ponies. This, coupled with reading all the James Herriot books and watching the original TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, sowed the seeds of an idea for her future life path.

“I wanted to be a vet when I was wee,” she recalls. “I wasn’t going to just do cats and dogs. I was going to be there, on a very cold winter’s morning, with my arm up a cow’s backside.”

Fast forward a few decades and McIntosh, now 51, is working in a vet’s office. Well, technically not her, but rather the Paisley-born actor’s on-screen alter ego, as the Doctor Who and Bodies star joins All Creatures Great and Small on Channel 5 this week.

McIntosh plays Miss Harbottle, an officious bookkeeper who arrives at Skeldale House to help get the veterinary practice’s chaotic finances into order. Suffice to say, the character soon ruffles feathers as she finds herself at odds with the laissez-faire attitude of how things are run.

“She is a spinster lady of a certain age and incredibly efficient,” says McIntosh. “Her way is always the right way. There is a supercilious air about her because she thinks she knows better than anyone else.”

All Creatures Great and Small is based on the experiences of Scots-educated vet James Herriot (real name Alf Wight). It centres on a trio of vets working in the Yorkshire Dales, between the 1930s and 1950s.

Many viewers will fondly remember the original TV adaptation, with Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison, Carol Drinkwater and Lynda Bellingham, which aired on BBC One from 1978 to 1990. The Channel 5 reboot, now in its fourth series, began in 2020.

Both telly incarnations draw from the James Herriot books, penned by Glasgow Veterinary College graduate Wight, sharing semi-autobiographical details from his work and life in Thirsk, Yorkshire.

McIntosh is thrilled to join the cast of the cosy drama, which stars fellow Scot Nicholas Ralph playing Herriot, as well as Samuel West as eccentric head vet Siegfried Farnon, Anna Madeley as matriarch housekeeper Mrs Hall and Rachel Shenton as James’s wife Helen.

“You are stepping into such a fantastic family of people,” says McIntosh. “Everyone is so welcoming and lovely.”

She recounts arriving on set and being given a memorable gift by her co-star Samuel West. “He had potted out seedlings and said, ‘There is one for you, Neve’. It was a little chilli plant. I was given it as a wee present on my first day. What a sweet thing to do.

“I just got the one chilli off it, but it survived the car journey back to London. I chopped the chilli up and put it in some olive oil which was tasty. The chilli plant is still doing well in my garden.”

As the show’s name suggests, an array of bovine, equine, rodent, reptilian, feline and canine thespians feature in All Creatures Great and Small. Hasn’t McIntosh heard the old adage about never working with children or animals?

“All the animals they had on set were amazing,” she says. “The dogs that you always see running around were gorgeous. And they loved belly rubs. So, I got into a bit of trouble for getting dog hairs on my costume.”

McIntosh laughs. “It was fine. They [the wardrobe department] just tidied me up and popped me back out in front of the camera.

Her character, however, is the antithesis to McIntosh, “because Miss Harbottle can’t stand animals,” she says. “Siegfried has his pet rat which he leaves in the office and Miss Harbottle keeps having to move it around because she can’t stand it.

“Of course, I did the classic thing of sticking my finger out at it [the rat] and I got a wee nip, which was absolutely my own fault.” That didn’t put her off? “Oh no, I love rats,” she enthuses. “They are very clever little creatures.”

Does she have any pets herself? “I do – I have two pussy cats. One is called Ruby and the other is Elvis. I either wake up snuggled with them or by getting a wet nose in my eye socket telling me to get up and feed them.”

Her fondness for animals stretches back to childhood. McIntosh credits the magic of All Creatures Great and Small with helping stoke that lifelong passion. “I was such a fan of the original series as a kid,” she says. “My parents had all the books because they loved reading them as well.”

This sparked those early aspirations of becoming a vet. “I loved all that because I was one of those girls who was mad daft into ponies. I ended up working at stables looking after horses and doing those cold mornings without, obviously, sticking my hand up their backsides,” deadpans McIntosh.

“But then, you realise the reality and it is bloody cold first thing in the morning mucking out horses. You would turn up and get to work with the horses and learn about looking after them, as well as having riding lessons.”

Her mum’s side of the family hail from a long line of Ayrshire farmers. “It all bleeds into wanting to work with animals and help look after them,” she says. “But then, weirdly, I have become an actress.”

Was there a catalyst for this change in career? “I was hopeless at biology,” admits McIntosh. “Couldn’t do it. So, I chose something else.”

She instead went to train at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow and has become a familiar face of stage and screen.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of McIntosh’s first TV role: a non-speaking part in a 1993 episode of Taggart. The crime drama was a rite of passage for many Scottish actors. What did her big debut entail?

“I got arrested,” she says, chuckling. “My mum always tells the story of how I phoned her up and said, ‘Mum, I got a job, I’m going to be in Taggart.’ She asked, ‘Oh, what are you going to be?’ and I replied, ‘I’m a prostitute!’”

The plotline involved McIntosh being a maid at a sex party as a police raid unfolded. “I was in my last year at college,” she recounts. “It was a scene with Mark McManus. You see me getting huckled and taken out. He follows with James MacPherson, explaining what has been going on.

“I remember trying to carry a tray with champagne and glasses, while not tripping over the lighting stands and cables in high heels. I was like, ‘Oh my God, is this what it’s like? Being on stage is much easier’.”

McIntosh later returned to Taggart as a guest star in 2010, this time working alongside Alex Norton and Blythe Duff. “It was nice to go back and do a full, proper part and say, ‘I have done my Taggart. Tick.’”

With a career spanning the 1990s to the present day, she has witnessed firsthand the advent of the big streaming giants and myriad changes in how we consume what we watch. “With working, it hasn’t felt like it has changed much for me,  it is more as a viewer,” says McIntosh.

“But I quite like that some of the streaming channels are bringing back that you only get an episode once a week. I like that waiting and thinking, ‘Oh my God, what is going to happen next week’. Sometimes it is good to wait for things and not just have whatever you want, when you want it.”

London-based McIntosh hopes to move home to Scotland in the near future, ideally somewhere rural but within driving distance of city life and her family in Fife. Her longtime goal is to have a field with her own horse. “As a kid that was the dream. Now I’m like, ‘Why am I waiting? I could actually have that’.”

And there is another reason too: McIntosh is a big football fan and whenever possible likes to watch Hibernian in action, as well as cheering on Scotland in their Euro 2024 campign.

“I’m hoping Scotland are going to qualify. I’m not going to tempt fate. Touch wood” – a knocking sound drifts down the line as she says it – “but we are doing really well. I might be able to dust off my wee kilt and Scotland top to head off with the Tartan Army.”

All Creatures Great and Small continues on Channel 5, Thursdays, 9pm. Catch up on My5