Stars on her couch

Ask men in their forties about Pamela Stephenson, and they go a bit misty eyed. In the late 1970s, along with Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones on Not the Nine O'Clock News, she helped to reinvent the topical TV sketch show. Whether interviewing Gerald the intelligent gorilla, sporting huge fake breasts or impersonating Kate Bush (warbling "Oh England My Leotard"), Stephenson showed it was possible to be drop-dead gorgeous and a great physical comedienne. She paved the way for a generation of women in alternative comedy: today's stars, from Smack the Pony to Green Wing, cite her as a key influence.

We've barely seen Stephenson on our TV screens for over 20 years, but next week she launches Shrink Rap, billed as part chatshow, part psychodynamic interview. Her guests include Sharon Osbourne, Stephen Fry, David Blunkett and the Duchess of York, and it is already getting a lot of media attention.

Stephenson wanted to get away from the usual chatshow, where celebrities trot out hoary anecdotes to plug their latest project. The in-depth interviews are filmed in semi-darkness over an intense two and a half hours. "It's the first time I've done something on TV where I absolutely didn't think for a second about what I looked like."

And she gets results. Fergie reveals that her mother told her she was monstrously ugly, Blunkett describes the difficulty of getting a sex education at his school for the blind. Stephenson also cuts through evasion - she won't let Fry, a self-confessed "people- pleaser", humourously dismiss the rape he suffered at boarding school.

Now 57, Stephenson has reinvented herself. After marrying Billy Connolly in 1989 and moving to Los Angeles (they have three daughters), she trained as a clinical psychologist. For 15 years she has practised as a psychotherapist, as Dr Pamela Connolly, special- ising in anxiety, depression and self-esteem issues.

Retiring from fame was easy, she insists: "I am quite fun-loving but it was a problem when people expected me always to be funny and glamorous offstage." She saw Pamela Stephenson the comic as a "performance".

But she didn't disappear altogether. She wrote two best-selling memoirs about her husband (in 2001's Billy she told of his abuse by his father). And her status means she can call on A-listers for Shrink Rap. Robin Williams is a family friend, and she famously gatecrashed Prince Andrew's stag party dressed in police uniform, with Fergie and Princess Di.

She sees the new show as a chance for her interviewees to get beyond the "official story" of themselves that famous people learn to present to the world. Not only will they hopefully appear more human, we may gain an insight into our own problems.

On screen Stephenson looks much the same: poker-straight blonde hair, voluptuous curves encased in a smart suit. She is also a fantastic listener. Shrink Rap is a far cry from the gladiatorial technique of a Paxman. "It's good to be intrusive as a journalist, the whole thing is about backing people into a corner, but that's the opposite of what psychotherapy is about." So is there a clash between TV work and therapy? She trained in LA, and "all my mentors said, 'You'll find what you've been through will help many of your patients'." She wrote her thesis on "the intrapsychic experience of fame". Of celebrities, she says: "[Their] official story is there for a very good reason, it's a defence, but when you get that gap between the objectified famous self out there, and the true self inside, that's when people start to have a lot of problems."

Stephenson was born in New Zealand, and later the family moved to Australia. She was quite a nerdy, bookish child. "We didn't have a TV until I was a teenager."

She went to drama school and carved out a stage career, only trying stand-up when she moved to London in 1976. When the comedy producer John Lloyd was looking for a woman to join Not the Nine O'Clock News, Victoria Wood turned him down, and he approached Stephenson. She met Connolly on the show while doing a spoof interview in Janet Street-Porter teeth. Both of them left their marriages. Later she threatened to end the relationship unless he gave up drinking. "With Pam I discovered you could not get away with anything," he has said. Today they have one of the happiest marriages in showbiz, although Stephenson talks candidly about being married to a national treasure. "I belong to a sort of unofficial famous wives' club where we share horrible things that happen."

Last week a paper wrote that one of her daughters is "mentally handicapped". It was a painful moment, because the terminology was incorrect. "She struggles with some of the same issues that Billy struggled with when he was a kid, learning issues and so on, but she's bright." After 20-plus years of bringing up children, one senses Stephenson has a new sense of freedom. In 2004 she recreated the voyage of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny around the South Pacific. A year later she set sail to discover the fate of her great-grandfather who was murdered in the South Seas.