Julie T Wallace went through a nine month period of screen tests, auditions and read-throughs before she won the role of Ruth. She still wasn't the first choice and only got the part when the preferred choice(s) couldn't make the filming dates chosen. She was just 24 at the time.

Award-winning
The series won a BAFTA for the Best Drama series in 1987. Julie T Wallace was nominated in the Best Actress category.

NZ Fay
Fay Weldon wasn't born in England, she was born in New Zealand in 1931 and moved to England as a teenager.

Go to work
Fay once worked in advertising and she is often credited for coining the slogan Go To Work On An Egg, a claim she refutes.

TV hits
Famous for her feminist novels, Fay Weldon also adapted Pride and Prejudice for the BBC and wrote the series Big Women, as well as several episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Honourable Fay
Fay was awarded a CBE in 2001. About the honour, Fay said: "One feels very flattered and honoured and it is nice to be acknowledged. But as an author you do all sorts of unseen work as well.

"I see this as an acknowledgement of that and that is how it should be. A lot of writers do this, because as soon as you get any public profile people ask you and you would have to be a very hard hearted person to say no."

Patricia's skills
Patricia Hodge has some hidden talents - she plays the piano and guitar, has a mezzo-soprano singing voice and has been trained in ballet and tap dancing.

She-Devil sounds
Dennis Waterman didn't write and sing the theme tune - that honour went to composers Richard Thompson and Peter Filleul, and singer Christine Collister.

Cloning Patricia Hodge
Another of Fay Weldon's novels adapted for television was The Cloning of Joanna May, which also starred Patricia Hodge. In the 1992 drama, Joanna May discovers her ex-husband has made three copies of her.

Cult ancestry
Julie T Wallace is the daughter of actor Andrew Keir - famous for playing Professor Bernard Quatermass in the film version of Quatermass and the Pit.

Double D Wallace
Julie went on to use her assets in the James Bond film The Living Daylights, famously crushing Timothy Dalton with her cleavage as Rosika Miklos. She was reunited with Dennis Waterman on the ITV drama Stay Lucky.

Father Tom
Playing Father Fergusson is Tom Baker, who is no stranger to playing mad monk - he played Rasputin in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra and went on to play Father Bernard in the BBC One demon drama Strange.