How wrong can you be! Lucy Akhurst's star has risen and risen ever since her drama teacher told her a few home truths...

WONDERFUL YOU ITV/TUESDAY

The words of a certain college lecturer will stay forever with Lucy Akhurst. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, downright cruel.

Especially when you consider they were aimed at a young girl barely out of her teens and a long way from home. Lucy, now 28 and doing very nicely as one of the stars of ITV's critically acclaimed series Wonderful You on Tuesday, remembers every single one of them. And it's to her great credit that she tells the story with a healthy sense of humour.

'It was at the end of my first year at drama school and he called me in for a sort of state-of-the nation report,' she says. 'His words will stay with me forever. He said I was a "snide, superior bitch who'll be a part-time singing librarian if you're lucky".

'I'm not entirely sure what I'd done to deserve that. It was very upsetting at the time, but I suppose in a way it made me more determined to succeed.' Lucy's far too nice to be the kind of woman who, almost a decade later, would seek out the lecturer and ram those words back down his throat as it were. Anyway, her career's doing that for her.

Born in London and raised in Newcastle - her parents, both teachers, moved to the North-East when she was three - Lucy acted at school and then joined a local youth theatre before going to drama college in Guildford.

'I think I always knew I wanted to act' she says. 'My parents were suportive and very encouraging, though I think they were secretly a bit worried I might starve...'

She left Guildford early - not, she stresses, because of that lecturer - but because she was offered the part of 'bimbo bitch' Laura Delooze in The Preston Front.

She did three series of the hit BBC show and was on her way. Theatre roles followed, plus ITV's The Vanishing Man. But she considers Wonderful You, with co-star Greg Wise, her best job so far.

'It's brilliantly written, funny, sad and very truthful,' says Lucy, who plays the beautiful Clare yearning to settle down and have a baby with Mr Right.

Lucy's very sympathetic with her character, but she feels no need for babies in her life. I've never been at all maternal and, to be honest, I don't think I ever will.

Plus I've got nephews, I've got my friends' children, who I love. I feel no need at all for any of my own.'

She recently split up from a boyfriend of six years and now lives in a cottage with her Border collie puppy called Harvey for company.

'We decided to go our separate ways, it was a mutual decision and perfectly amicable.' And she does, of course, have the comfort of a blossoming career. And the knowledge that a certain lecturer must be feeling rather foolish.

Edward Goodland