"I have abseiled down Table Mountain, I have swum with great white sharks off the coast of South Africa, I have cycled around Japan, I have climbed in the Himalayas and I have swum with killer whales," declares Angela Rippon.

"And all in my 50s and 60s. To be honest, my thoughts when they asked me to do Anything Goes were, 'I'm 61, I can do what I like!' "

It doesn't seem the most natural of things for an icon of British broadcasting - especially one known for her straightbacked deportment, frosted hairdo and clipped newsroom tones - to make the transition into musical comedy. But perhaps it will make more sense to those who remember Rippon's appearance, 30 years ago, on the Morecambe and Wise show, where she high-kicked her way from behind her desk and proved, once and for all, newsreaders do have legs.

A go-getter with all the verve and application of a Girl Guide, Rippon can turn her hand, and other parts of her anatomy, to pretty much anything.

And though she is best known as a newsreader - the first regular woman newsreader, in fact, who as late as 2003 was being asked to anchor ITV's coverage of the Iraq war - she is now what is known, in PR terms, as a "versatile personality".

Currently filming a new series of Sun, Sea & Bargain Spotting for BBC2, she has presented everything from The Antiques Roadshow to the Eurovision Song Contest, as well as numerous arts programmes. But, despite 40 years on our screens, she has never, until now, been seen on the stage.

"I'd encountered the director, Ian Talbot, through his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company," she explains. "He said, 'I've seen you work and I know you can do it'. And when someone with that much experience says something like that to you, who are you to go against it?"

A Cole Porter comedy with a script co-written by PG Wodehouse, Anything Goes is a high farce set aboard luxury ocean liner the SS American.

Stowaway Billy Crocker is chasing the delectable debutante Hope Harcourt while being pursued by ex-evangelist turned nightclub hostess Reno Sweeney.

Amid the romance, gangster Moonface Martin, a master of disguise, confounds a smattering of dim-witted FBI agents.

"I play Hope's mother, Evangeline," says Rippon, who stars alongside Brookside's Michael Starke and Hi-De-Hi's Barry Howard. "Her whole purpose was to marry a man with a lot of money and now she is set on marrying off her daughter to somebody rich. A dreadful woman with only one redeeming feature - she loves her dog.

"It's really just a cameo but I'm enjoying it so much," she says. "My tennis partner is Elaine Paige and she was in this in the Eighties. On tour, I keep getting texts from her saying, 'So? So?'"

Starts at 7.45pm, Thur and Sat mats 2.30pm. Tickets cost £16-£27, call 08700 606650.