THE BROOKSIDE TRIAL - JAIL BIRD ?

Forget OJ Simpson... its the Brookside Trial ! Is it a life behind bars for Beth and Mandy (We decide!) ? And how did they get in this mess in the first place ? But first, why is Anna Friel such a cracking babe ? Read on....

- Anna is 19 and lives on the outskirts of Rochdale with her mum Sheila, a special needs teacher, and dad Des, who teaches French, plus 15-year-old brother Michael. They're in a very close-knit family. Anna has been acting since she was 13 , but it was just a hobby until she had to choose between doing Brookside or going to finishing her A levels and on to university.

- A clever girl, she left school with 9 GCSE's, five of which are A's. And she had just started taking four A-levels at sixth form before Brookie came along.

- She shares her agent with posh British-Hollywood elite like Anthony Hopkins and helena Bonham-Carter.

- As a result of her affair with best friend Margaret on the show, she gets asked out by girls all the time, and boys come up to her on the street and tell her it's a shame, she's gay!. "being a gay icon is no different to being a straight icon", she reckons.

- If her acting hadn't taken off Anna'd be well on her way to being a barrister. Now, with the court case happening, Anna laughs: "It looks as though I've made it to the crown court after all!"

- She's being stalked by a crazed fan who found out her parents' phone number and calls her three times a day. One time she spoke to him ("it was scary") he whispered "I am going to haunt you for the rest of your life". People also turn up at the house which she says is " a bit of a downer after a while".

- Last year's on-screen kiss with Margaret took two takes because they both giggled, while the kiss with her female tutor Chris ended up being 16 (16 !) proper snogs. Anna says it was an excuse to find out what it was like to kiss a girl. Her verdict ? Much "softer" apparently.

- The weirdest letter she ever got was from three angry mothers who called Beth "a disgrace to society". Not for killing her father or having a lesbian relationship, but for wearing ripped jeans on screen and being a bad influence for kids.

- Anna's brother, Michael was TV's original Hovis Boy. By 'eck.

-Anna's such a workaholic and her role so gruelling and stressful that during the filming of the Jordaches' escape to Ireland she keeled over and collapsed, and was ordered home to rest. It left the scriptwriters all hot and flustered 'cos they had to change the script to explain her disappearance.

- She answers every fan letter, which add up to about 100 a week !

- Anna's officially been voted a megababe. But she's not so sure: "Ooh gosh, am I a babe?"

- Anna was regarded as resident agony aunt at school.

- On her first date, when she was 14, she went to the movies to watch Green Card and chatted all the way through it. The fella didn't ask her out again. "I think I talked him to death", she laughs.

- Just after she killed her father on Brookside, she went on holiday and was once verbally attacked at Manchester airport by a crowd of drunks who started chanting "Murderer!! Murderer!" "It was horrible," she monas.

- She reckons the power of soaps is stronger than the power of the movies: "I can walk into a room with Emma Thompson and more people will probably relate to me, which is sad because she's a fantastic actress, but I'm in people's living rooms three or four times a week".

- Before Brookside, Anna had appeared in Channel 4 series GBH (as Michael Palin's daughter), Medics, Coronation Street and the Saturday morning TV show The 8,15 from Manchester.

- Hollywood directors keep flying out to meet her, but she has to decline any of their offers until her Brookside commitments are over.

- Anna is dating 26 year-old actor/entertainer Darren Day, who she met at the first-night party of his musical Joseph in Manchester. "It was the old thing of eyes meeting across the room. Neither of us knew who the other was". Now they're in love and thinking about moving to London together.

- Darren has now been welcomed into the family home, but it took a while - Anna's parents being a bit concerned that she was too young. Darren thinks the real reason for their concern was that their daughter was "going out with a guy who prances around the stage in a loincloth".

- Her most romantic fantasy is sitting in a log cabin in front of an open fire with Tom Cruise, wearing woolly jumpers and sipping hot chocolate.

- She loves most kinds of music, her faves being Paul Weller (she met him last year!), Prince, REM and Sting... but don't ever invite her to a rave club - she loathes that music !