Stephanie Beacham became famous as the TV Soap superbitch Sable Colby and lives in a pink house in Malibu. So what is she doing back in England appearing in the gloomy drama Bad Girls?

Stephanie Beacham is not happy. She has had her bag snatched and her cards, her money and her driving licence are all gone. Before we start, she has to finish applying for a new licence. "I feel beaten down by miserable little forms," she sighs. "I feel so sorry for people who don't speak English all that well, or have had everything stolen. I went to the bank to get some dosh, and they wanted a signature. A signature! I didn't have a signature because I didn't have any cards! If I had a signature, I would have had my cards and if I had my cards, I wouldn't have needed any money! It's just as well my passport wasn't in my bag." I get the feeling Beacham's passport is very important to her.

Now, in her driving licence application, Beacham wants my signature. "It says," she sighs, "that I need a 'professional' to, sign my photograph, to say it's a true likeness of me or some such. You're a professional," she says, rather generously. "You can sign it."

So, I sign the photo. While I worry I may have inadvertently committed fraud (for which I am very sorry), Beacham is bemoaning bureaucracy. Lately, she has also been burgled. "You get the shock of the burglary, and then, just when you're least prepared for it, you have to go into the bureaucracy. 'Sorry, we only replace carpets up to the first doorway,' the insurance people say." (she adopts a nasal, jobsworth voice for that part, before returning to her own honeyed tones). "The fact that you live in a postage stamp and you need the stairs, the bedroom and the bathroom all to be in the same carpet is immaterial to them. It's enough to make you eat sugar!"

Beacham composes herself. She does so because she is a professional. A trouper. She faces whatever life might throw at her, lips slightly pursed, chin resting on hand, head slightly tilted. Poised in 16 shades of cream and caramel. Not a hair out of place.

It's not all been plain sailing. We might remember her as Sable Colby, all fur coats and expensive knickers, stiletto heels and shoulder pads, but there were times when Beacham, a single mother with two daughters, had bills to pay and no way to pay them. "There I was, back to the Aga, sitting at the kitchen table with £2,000 worth of bills in front of me. I had to choose between a play that I really, really wanted to do, which would have paid me £65 a week, and this script for a film called Inseminoid. Hey! No choice. Two pink babies asleep upstairs! No choice! I made my choices, I did my best and I think the girls had a pretty good time."

When The Colbys came along, everything changed. Before Aaron Spelling made a supersoap uberbitch out of her, Beacham had been in Connie and Tenko, as well as low-budget horror films such as Inseminoid and 1973's I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream, of which "you can't be ashamed [because] they were too much fun." Considering Connie was set in the Nottingham knitwear industry and Tenko in a Japanese prison camp, these were good, solid roles, but not terribly glamorous. You can, therefore, appreciate the appeal of one Sable Colby.

"That was heaven, being airlifted out of England. The girls and I always say our lives turned Technicolor then. And it really did feel like that. England is, without a doubt, in monochrome. People dress in monochrome, everything must be as low as possible. There is definitely a feeling here of keeping it down."

Beacham calls Sable "an enormously troublesome friend whose frocks I miss, whose jewellery I miss, whose ability to be given limousines I sometimes pine for." Upon reflection, she says she had "the best of that greedy decade."

Working on Dynasty and The Colbys was hard work - too hard to be actual fun. "The hours on the set, the amount of poking at your face, the costume fitting: it was all exhausting. But the life that it afforded you was amazing. Not just the pay, but the invitations, darling! There was nobody that you wanted to meet that you couldn't. The kudos was incredible."

And, of course, one could be terribly useful to charity. Beacham leans in conspiratorially, "I purchased the ring cushion from Fallon and Jeff's wedding from the props boys - I thought they would have given me it for free, but I had to pay 75 bucks for it - and I sold that at a charity auction. For $75,000 (£44,500). In Hong Kong. How good is that? How amazing is that?"

It wasn't just ring cushions that were bid for during Beacham's time as Sable. She leans in, closer still. "I have been offered £40,000 for sex," she whispers. "That was my highest, an offer from a Middle Eastern businessman. I was just appalled, darling. Probably £40,000 isn't very much but that was the offer that came over on a note to the table. Isn't that funny? How did he come up with £40,000?" She pauses. "Perhaps that was just the cash he had on him."

Beacham's doing not so bad in this decade either. She may have popped up in the new series of Bad Girls as "Costa Con" Phyl but she spends most of her time in California. "The girls and I call it 'living in the pink' because that's what it feels like. I've just bought a new little beach property. It is pink, actually Pepto- Bismol pink. You see the sunrise over the ocean and the sun set over the ocean. It's modest, it's tiny, but it's on Point Doom and that's my favourite part of Malibu."

We are quickly establishing that London, England is not among her favourite places. Beacham had scheduled our meeting for the bar of the Paddington Hilton because "you could be anywhere in the world and I rather like that." In fact, if her daughter Chloe didn't live here and she could land herself a nice series in the US, you get the feeling Beacham would much prefer a California domicile to being banged up in HMP Larkhall. "When I saw the dressing room they give you in Bad Girls, I thought, 'My God, they give you more space in Rigby and Peller when you're trying on a bra."

But you mustn't for a moment think that Beacham complains all the time. It's really not all doom and gloom. For one thing, there's Footballers' Wives. "Is anything better than Footballers Wives? I can't imagine! It's heaven! It's joyous." For another, there's David Beckham. "He's absolutely the most gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous person. I mean, I think he's sheer and utter heaven. I fell in love with him when he was on Parkinson and I thought 'David Beckham, you are just the cutest, sweetest thing.' Isn't he lovely!"

Beacham, bless her, is happy after all.