All the fame was madness in the 90s, it gave me anxiety attacks...but now it's like going back home

AS Patsy Palmer prepares to return to Albert Square as Bianca Jackson, one-time wife of hapless RICKAAAY, she warns fans to expect a different character, on and off screen.

- MARC BAKER

The 51-year-old actress says viewers can expect to see a much calmer Bianca - and a different Patsy from the hard-living party girl she was in the 1990s.

It is five years since Patsy was last in EastEnders, and she can't wait to return.

Now living in Malibu, California, with her husband, Richard Merkell, and four children, she said: "I must admit, when I see people in EastEnders, when I go back to work it is like putting on an old pair of slippers.

"They are family. I spent more time with them when I was in the show than with any of my own family." She landed the role of Bianca Jackson in 1993, cast as the sharp-talking daughter of Carol Jackson, played by Lindsey Coulson, and future wife of the long-suffering Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen).

Overnight fame came at a cost. Patsy, who has been open about suffering from anxiety, tells the How To Own The Room podcast: "Looking back now, everything was so much bigger at the time.

"I was very young and we were thrown into the height of fame not realising there were 22 million people watching us. At some moments in all that madness back in 1990 it would hit you and you would feel so overwhelmed and the anxiety would kick in.

"If you suffer from anxiety attacks, you don't know what is happening. For me it was very environmental and about what was happening around me and what was happening in my life at that time.

"People see all the awards and people think it is glamorous, but it is the hardest work I have ever had at EastEnders." Born in Barnet, north London, Patsy studied at the Anna Scher Theatre school and was a 20-year-old single mum when she got her big break.