Like a gallon of emotional TNT, Sheridan was simply dynamite

Actor Peter Davison, a man who can wield a compliment like a blunt instrument, remarked in his autobiography that, for all actress and singer Sheridan Smith’s exceptional talent, ‘I wouldn’t claim to be a friend of hers. I couldn’t keep it up.’

During their West End run in Legally Blonde, eight years ago, Davison was often sent to coax his co- star out of her dressing room after a fit of blue funk. No wonder he found her exhausting.

chatting to compere Alexander Armstrong in her glitzy one- off musical spectacular Sheridan (ITV), the actress admitted she was ‘a handful’. As understatements go, that’s like saying mad dictator Kim Jong-un is ‘a bit bossy’.

But so what? Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe weren’t renowned for their easy-going natures either. We like our stage stars to be wildly melodramatic — and from the first note Sheridan exploded like a gallon of emotional TNT dynamite overflowing from a champagne bottle.

Like the BBC’s Harry Styles special last week, this show was an extended plug for a new album. It was also promoting her national tour in the musical Funny Girl, and opened with its signature number Don’t rain on My Parade.

Alexander Armstrong set the tone for the evening with his first question: ‘ Where does all this talent come from?’

Sheridan giggled coyly, and waggled her shoulders with a blush. She can carry off most gestures, but this made her look like comic Kenny Everett’s outrageous glamour girl, cupid Stunt.

Still, she didn’t dodge the more awkward questions. Following the death of her father last year, her moods became more erratic than ever and she pulled out of several shows, including one that was cancelled in mid-performance.

the album features a cover of crazy by Gnarls Barkley, ‘ a little cheeky wink to my meltdown last year . . . I lost my mind a bit’, she admitted.

Dropping her transatlantic twang from the first number, she performed crazy in X Factor style, all bombast and rough edges. It worked — she hasn’t got the greatest range, but she knows how to push her voice to the utmost within its limitations.

tears poured down her face as she delivered a ballad from Dream Girls, and surely she’s not as volatile as all that. that raises the question that Armstrong didn’t dare ask: is she really a natural musicals star, like Barbra Streisand, or is she an actress who is playing the role of a West End singer?

I suspect she’s acting the whole way. But she’s so good, so committed to the part that the difference is immaterial. As she sang in the closing number, Mad About the Boy: ‘real or not I couldn’t tell, but like a silly fool I fell.’

‘real or not’ was the crucial question in series one of the deliriously silly Spanish soap I Know Who You Are (BBc4). It hinged on the claims of devious lawyer Juan Elias (Francesc Garrido) that he had lost his memory in a car crash. Just a few weeks after this subtitled drama reached its thrillingly daft climax, it’s come back for a second series.

For helpless addicts like me, that’s great news, not least because all the characters are still fresh in our minds — even if we can’t exactly remember who lied to whom about betraying whose secret plan that turned out to be someone else’s elaborate bluff.

to make it more confusing still, most of them are related to each other by blood or marriage. And now they’re all suspects in an attempted murder.

And it’s all done in over-heated Spanish. Quite loopy, but still marvellous.