Jodie Prenger is "happiest" when spending time with her animals away from TV fame.

Jodie Prenger would rather be outside feeding her animals than enjoying the trappings of TV fame

Jodie Prenger would rather be outside feeding her animals than enjoying the trappings of TV fame

The 45-year-old actress stars as barmaid Glenda Shuttleworth on 'Coronation Street', but away from the set of the ITV1 soap opera, she lives on a farm with her fiance Simon Motson and their menagerie made up of three rescue cows, 16 ex-battery hens, five ducks, three ducklings and cockerel Mo.

She told OK! Magazine: "My Uncle Len used to have a bedroom for all his pot-bellied pigs and I’d love a house pig myself. People think because you’re on 'Corrie' you drink nothing but Moët and Chandon champagne and walk around wearing sunglasses the whole time. But I’m a real person. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

"I’m sure a nice calm life would be lovely, but I prefer to be outside feeding the chickens and the cows. I do love putting a posh frock on for a fancy social event, but I know what makes me happiest and that’s the animals, even if I am smelling of chicken poo half the time!"

Meanwhile, the soap star first found fame when she won Andrew Lloyd Webber's BBC talent search 'I'd Do Anything' in 2008 and as a result played the role of Nancy in a West End revival of 'Oliver!' alongside Rowan Atkinson.

She has gone on to an illustrious career in theatre, with leading roles in 'Shirley Valentine', 'Annie' and earlier this year she took on the mammoth role of Mama Rose in a one-off production of 'Gypsy' for the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester.

But prior to mainstream success,she worked as a cabaret singer and performed in less-than-glamorous venues as she recalled once being fired at with a BB gun as she tried to get through her song.

She said: "I got changed in many a toilet because they didn’t have a dressing room and I dried my hair under the hand-drier before going on to stage. I walked into one club and it smelt of wee.

"At another they were still throwing darts on the stage while I was trying to set up. At one booking in Wales, I was the support act for Joe Pasquale, but then you’d have to go to this other venue and there were kids with BB guns firing at you while you were singing."

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