When Melissa Johns was eight years old she decided she’d like to be in the annual Ledbury panto put on by Ledbury Amateur Dramatic Society. That was the year, it turned out, that everyone else had the same idea and, after the principal roles had been cast, Melissa’s name, with others who had auditioned, went into a hat. “They couldn’t say ‘yes’ to everyone,” she recalls. Happily she won a ‘golden ticket’ and after her first taste of performing on stage, there was no going back. “That was when this life of being in front of people and entertaining them began,” says Melissa, who has appeared in Coronation Street (no audition, but more of that later) and, most recently, was seen on our screens in the BBC’s prime time drama Life, alongside Alison Steadman, Adrian Lester and Victoria Hamilton.