YOU won’t catch Jodie Prenger shirking mortifying anecdotes, awkward slip-ups or sneakily editing cringe-worthy childhood trials. She is only too happy to share them for laughs.

At the mention of her latest role as the despotic Miss Hannigan in Annie at Oxford’s New Theatre, she paints an unforgiving picture of her seven-year-old self, in all her mushroom-bob glory gleefully "hissing" the words to Tomorrow through the gaping hole in her teeth.

“Bless me when I was Annie’s age I had knocked my front teeth out so every ‘sssong’ and ‘sss’(she puts on a lips to illustrate) was a bit difficult. The sun will come out tomorrow probably lasted another half a minute,” she admits, before bursting into fits of giggles.

Her childhood woes did not end there. She was the designated “male” in virtually every musical at her girls’ school, though by that time her front teeth had thankfully grown back.

“That’s the downside about going to an all-girl school,” she laughs. “I’ve been really tried and tested growing up. That’s what’s , and it made me so hardy for the industry.”

And she is not shy either about sharing her jerky journey from hair-brush crooner to West End beacon.

After dropping out of her musical theatre course, where she was relentlessly bullied, she totted up stints as a Disney princess on cruise ships and warm-up comedian before her breakthrough role as Nancy in Oliver!

Charmingly self-deprecating and every bit as unpretentious as the hesitant candidate who burst onto our screens on BBC’s I’d Do Anything, she could not be further apart from her first real stage baddie, the infamous orphanage owner Miss Hannigan.

“She is so vile but there is still that warmth in her you still feel for her,” she says. “She has lost her way in life, she never had it good and she turned to the bottle. She is quite bitter. But she’s wickedly fun.

“Baddies are so much fun to play. And it’s a great way to channel your anger.”

In 2008, two years after winning Living TV’s The Biggest Loser, she auditioned for another reality show, this time to be cast as Nancy in a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical Oliver! Older, larger and decidedly ordinary she stood out among the gaggle of stick-thin divas ready to just about do anything to elbow their way to the top. But the hypnotic and relatable "Blackpool lass" caught the public’s eye.

This baptism by fire certainly stood her in good stead for the vagaries of show business and some of its less palatable spawns. She reasons: “There are these people some in the industry who will stab you in the back even if you’re the nicest person in the world to them but you just have to block them out,” she reasons.

“I’ve always said, ‘It’s nice to be important but it’s important to be nice’.

"People can either take that and value it or take advantage of it. But if you stay true to who you are, and what you want out of life and work hard, you’re on the right way. That’s my motto, “Just work hard and you’ll get there.”

As the conservation turns to her reality show credentials and the pitfalls of laying oneself bare on television, she ponders the possibility of filming one final series and ending on an even (well odd) three.

“Maybe I should go for a triple,” she chuckles. But I’m a Celebrity is out. “I could never do the jungle, I’m scared of ants.”

The prospect of being gawped at by thousands of viewers as she launches into a power ballad is far less petrifying, she insists.

“I always found it more daunting to sing for friends and family, people you know, than in front of thousands of people. I remember when Andrew Lloyd Webber came to see Calamity and everybody was like ‘Oh My God the Lord is in.’ It’s so much scarier.”

Grounded to a fault Jodie is seemingly oblivious to her calibre in the industry or the fact that she has become a ‘name’ in her own right.

She recalls meeting her idol Liza Minnelli with schoolgirl giddiness, completely glossing over the fact (until heavily prompted) that the musical theatre icon had paid good money to see her perform in One Man, Two Guvnors in the West End.

“Well, I was just in tears,” she gushes. “But it’s funny I wasn’t that bothered when the Queen came to see us a couple of weeks later, it was just the Queen,” she quips. “Liza Minnelli is one of my idols, she has left a mark that will last forever. She had given us a singing lesson [on I’d Do Anything] and when she came to see me after the show I couldn’t believe she remembered me.

"I’ve always feared meeting somebody I loved and finding out there are not as nice as you think. I’ve had a couple let-downs but not Liza Minnelli.”

Away from the glitz of the stage – and the odd run-in with Minnelli and Doris Day - Jodie is at her most content on her farm. She is the proud new owner of a smallholding.

“It’s my dream to have an animal farm and I’m a step closer; now all I need is lots of animals that nobody wants,” she giggles. “The West End Sanctuary that’s what I should call it.”

Fodder for a third reality series perhaps?

Annie runs at the New Theatre Oxford from December 15 until January 3. To book call 0844 871 3020 or visit www.atgtickets.com/oxford.