After two major operations for cancer and a brave battle back to work, actress Noele Gordon is sick again.  This time she has been struck down by painful shingles.

 

"I am very lucky really because I haven't got it particularly badly," she reports from her home in Birmingham.  "But it's very painful and it's a very lowering complaint."

 

Noele, 60, who had operations for stomach cancer last November and was taken into hospital for a second operation three months ago, is battling back to the screen.

 

"I did several mornings on TV AM a week or so ago.  And I have been recording some programmes for my local radio station.  But I would like to do more television - and I am ready for it," she says.

 

Noele stars on Roy Hudd's music hall programme, Halls of Fame on Tuesday, when the programme comes from the Empire Theatre in Sunderland.

 

"When I was a young girl, I used to travel round all the music halls, and the Empire was my favourite," she says.  "My mother and father were married in Sunderland, so I always felt I had a bit of Sunderland blood in my veins."

 

One show on which she will not be making a comeback is Crossroads, the Central television chart-busting series, now being revamped.

 

"I have never said I wanted to be Meg again and I haven't been asked," she says firmly.

 

And she hotly denies rumours carried recently in a newspaper that there were plans to bring her back.

 

"Even if they were to offer it to me, I don't know what my reaction would be.  The question of Crossroads is entirely academic.  It's not worth talking about," she adds.