Debra Stephenson makes a good impression
Martin Limon celebrates the career of ‘Bad Girl’ and ‘Coronation Street’ star Debra Stephenson

As all would-be entertainers know, trying to break into show business requires talent, dedication and a large measure of luck. It also pays to get an early start and Debra Stephenson’s natural gift for mimicry was evident from childhood. Such was her enthusiasm for copying the voices of famous people that at the age of ten she was recording on tape so she could practice them for the entertainment of her family.

Encouraged by dad Ricky who helped her to write her scripts and mum Deborah who made her costumes, she was soon appearing at local social clubs with her comic impressions of  Margaret Thatcher and others. At 14 she appeared on the television talent show ‘Opportunity Knocks’ reaching the ‘all-winners final, while her impression of Esther Rantzen on the children’s show ‘Blue Peter’ indicated that she had a bright future. Much of her teenage years were spent on the road doing gigs at workingmen’s clubs, performing Shirley Bassey numbers at summer shows and appearing at events like the Edinburgh Festival. Her impersonation skills also led to voice work on ITV’s famous ‘Spitting Image’ satirical show.

The downside to this early success in show business was that she missed a great deal of schooling. Debra was a pupil at South Hunsley School at Melton, a village west of Hull and she recalls that she often took time off after performing in local social clubs because ‘I was just too tired to go to school and sometimes I didn’t do my homework because I had to practice my impressions and my cabaret act.’

Daydreaming about her future career meant that school did not seem important and she left at 16 with just three GCSEs. However, she later went back to study for her ‘A’ levels part time and then studied for a drama degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. Debra now began to secure a steady stream of acting work in TV children’s shows like ‘Chucklevision’, the popular ITV drama ‘Midsomer Murders’ and the BBC series ‘Playing the Field’, a comedy drama about the lives of the Castleford Belles, a female football team from South Yorkshire. This series created by Kay Mellor ran from 1998 to 2002 and was based on the real-life exploits of the Doncaster Belles women’s football team. Debra played the part of the naïve Dianne Powell in 14 episodes and her performance was well received by the critics. By 1999 she was working on the controversial ITV drama ‘Bad Girls’ set in a women’s prison, playing the hard-hitting role of ‘Shell Dockley’, resident drug dealer and prison bully serving life for the murder of the woman who ‘stole her boyfriend’. ‘Shell Dockley is a bit of a bitch, a slapper and a psycho who is always using her sexuality to get what she wants,’ Debra said. ‘She soon forms an illicit relationship with Jim Fenner, the male senior prison officer.’ The programme was nominated seven times at the National Television Awards (2000-2006) and Debra Stephenson was awarded ‘best actress’ in 2001.

By now a well-respected performer with roles in a number of TV series like ‘Mad About Alice’, ‘The Last Detective’ and  ‘Where the Heart Is’, Debra joined the cast of Britain’s most popular soap opera ‘Coronation Street’ in 2004. For two years she played the part of Frankie Baldwin, the wife of Bradley Walsh’s character Danny (nephew of Mike Baldwin). She quickly became a star of the show and was nominated for the title of ‘best newcomer’ at the 2004 television ‘soap’ awards. However, the hectic work schedule left her exhausted and with appearances in 218 episodes over two years it is understandable that she decided to quit ‘Corrie’ to spend more time with husband James Duffield and her son Max born in 2002. ‘James and I wanted another child and I got pregnant,’ she said. ‘However, the job was so full on. Sometimes I was doing a six-day week when I had a big storyline and it was relentless.’

Debra left Coronation Street at the end of December 2006 and gave birth to a daughter, Zoe, less than a month later. Bringing up two young children was now her priority and she enjoyed a less hectic lifestyle at her home in Richmond, Surrey. However, she still made appearances on breakfast television, on the ITV lunchtime chat show ‘Loose Women’, the panel game ‘Through the Keyhole’ and in 2008 on ‘Celebrity Masterchef’. And she appeared in pantomime at Ipswich in ‘Aladdin’. One review said of her performance: ‘Stephenson oozes showmanship. The actress is a panto tour de force with her superb singing voice and a quick fire impressions’ routine that rightly drew the biggest applause of the night.’

Debra has never given up her love of mimicry. During 2005 she met impressionist Jon Culshaw during the making of the charity show ‘Comic Relief Does Fame Academy’ and from this meeting developed the idea of a series featuring the two of them. An eight-week run of ‘The Impressions Show With Culshaw and Stephenson’ was commissioned by the BBC and began in late October 2009. ‘After I left Corrie Jon got in touch and it went from there,’ she said. ‘I was so deeply flattered that he even wanted to work with me. It’s been great fun but I’ve had many sleepless nights worrying about whether I would be able to pull it off.’ In the show Debra lampooned in a playful way a host of contemporary celebrities like Cheryl Cole, Amy Winehouse, Anne Robinson, Fiona Bruce and Kylie Minogue . One of the most difficult impressions was Davina McCall. ‘She doesn’t have a particularly strong accent and has a fairly regular presenting voice, so it’s more a matter of capturing her mannerisms,’ Debra said.

She did this by studying clips of her target on You Tube and through endless practice Debra was able to produce a hilarious impression of a hyperventilating and over-excited Davina reading a bedtime story.  In the same way she caught the essence of the abrasive style of Anne Robinson in a sketch in which she pretends to be a police negotiator saying to a man standing on a ledge and threatening to leap: ‘If you jumped, would you even know which way was down?’

By returning to the ‘impressionist roots’ that began her entertainment career, ‘it feels like I’ve gone full circle and am doing something that I love and enjoy and have always wanted to do since I was a kid,’ Debra said. However, she has no plans to give up acting and wants to do more drama and perhaps a musical where she can combine straight acting with her love of singing.