Patsy goes back to her manor

In a small gym off Bethnal Green Road, kickboxer Mashud Ahmed is going through his paces. His hands, bound with tape, make short stabbing punches at the trainer's pads; his breath comes in hard shushing pants. He kicks a leg over the trainer's head and spins round to aim another at his hip.

'Can I have a go?'

That squeaky voice is scarily familiar. Actress Patsy Palmer, 28, known to millions as EastEnders' Bianca Butcher, is hanging on the ropes, watching the fight. She thinks she's hard enough, all right. Grinning hugely, her red hair flowing over a black T-shirt, she clambers down the steps to take off her silver hoop earrings and watch.

'I like the kicking better than the punching,' she says, putting on red boxing gloves. 'It's lovely kicking, isn't it?'

Mm, lovely, I assent (this is a complete lie, since the last kicking I gave was probably in a fight with my sister at the age of nine, and she always came off better).

Mashud watches as Patsy hops about the ring and punches, two jabs with the left, a big swing with the right. That amazing red hair (eat your heart out Jennifer Aniston) swings and follows through. 'She's very good,' he says. 'Well, she's from the East End, isn't she? It's bred into her.' Patsy gets a good weight behind her upper cut, then falters and starts laughing. 'I can't fight,' she says. 'I couldn't fight in the street. I'd be too frightened. I'd be like "Oooooooo!" [cowardly squeaky-type noise].'

She is in the middle of filming her own television series, Patsy Palmer's Real East End. After leaving the soap last year, Patsy (whose real name is Julie Harris) presented Battersea Dogs' Home and has teamed up with the same producer to document the changing landscape which was, until recently, her home. She's at the gym to interview Patrick, the trainer, an old friend of hers from childhood. The shoot is a friendly, laid-back, family affair. Patsy's husband, Richard Merkell, 35, a cab driver and another childhood friend, has brought their three-month-old baby, and the dog - one of those Japanese fighting dogs with a pointy tail and long claws. Like Patsy, apparently, she was bred for fighting but doesn't have the stomach for it.

Patsy's in and out of the ring as though she owns the place. Well, she did own the place, actually. Two years ago, while working on EastEnders, she got bored of aerobics and wanted to try something new, so she came down here to train. 'I became quite friendly with the owner and thought I'd invest in it for the kids.' She thought boxing would provide a focus for local youths' energies, channel their aggression and stop them fighting in the streets. The idea was that kids coming to see their favourite soap star working out, or maybe hoping to give that Bianca a good slapping, would join the gym and start training.

'We made the upstairs into a yoga centre and had pilates classes,' says Patsy. 'We painted it all white. Martine [McCutcheon] and other people from EastEnders used to come down. It was nice and private. But it didn't work out. To run a business like this, you need to put in a lot of time.'

Patsy's attempt to invest in a local enterprise failed after only six months. It seems she underestimated the pugnacious politics of the boxing scene. Patrick, the trainer, describes the turbulent world of East End kickboxing - backbiting, bad management, gyms poaching each others' fighters. It sounds like Patsy may have been a little out of her depth.

Back in front of the camera, though, she's in her element, chattering away about old times. Mashud has got into his fighting gear, gloves on, gumshield in. As he spars with his trainer, heels and elbows flying, Patsy stands in the ring throwing him questions.

'What was it like growing up around here?'

'Mmmmm, shthhhh, mmbshp.'

'Was there much fighting at your school?'

'Mmn, thppthk, mmbth.'

He stops, out of breath. 'Can I do this without the gumshield?'

We move on to a Jewish old people's day centre in Stepney. On the way, in the back of Richard's cab, wedged between the baby seat and the pram, Patsy tells me the idea behind the series. She has not missed the irony that local people like herself move out as soon as they make a little money, while others, like artist Tracey Emin, make a little money and move in.

'What is it they think they're moving into? I can't understand what it is about it that makes people want to move here. The thing is with the East End, most people can't afford to move out. It's not a poor area but it's not a money area. I wouldn't want to bring up my kids here.'

Her own upbringing wasn't easy. Her mother worked to support three children and there was never any money to speak of. She describes the film Nil By Mouth, a shocking portrayal of drug addiction and domestic violence, as 'so familiar it's boring. When I look back on it now, I wouldn't want my kids to do what we did. It was not that great a place for children to grow up. We used to play out in the street; I was smoking properly by 11. My brother and his mates used to go off to have fights with kids from different areas. I've been lucky in a way, in that I've seen my brother going nowhere in life ? and have a drug problem and end up in prison. He went one way and I suppose I went another.'

She attended the famous Anna Scher Theatre classes. 'I knew I wanted to do something with my life. If I hadn't gone to Anna Scher's I don't know what I'd have done. It was cheap ? only 50p every time you went. I loved it.'

She's been acting since she was six. Her first TV role was in The Gentle Touch at the age of ten - she had to break into a flat and rescue a little girl. 'I look like a real little street urchin in that.'

She has had her share of problems since she landed the part of Bianca in EastEnders at 21. Her bouts with drugs and anorexia were fought out under the glare of publicity. She split up with the father of her little boy, Charley, then her 1998 marriage to director Nick Love - which began unpromisingly when a deal with OK! magazine to cover the wedding turned into a farce - ended after five months. Right now she seems relaxed and happy. She and Richard got married in August and moved to Chigwell, that suburban paradise for East Enders done good. She wanted Charley, now eight, to enjoy the green spaces and the good school she never had.

Even so, there may be a residual guilt at deserting her roots. 'I always said I wouldn't do it. Everyone seems to do it ? go from the East End to Chigwell, or Woodford. It's just what people from the East End do. I didn't want to, but I did it because of Charley's school.'

At the Stepney Jewish centre, the old people are gathering to meet her and have their weekly song and dance. Most of them now live alone: they worked hard to educate their children, who upped and fled the East End as soon as they got their qualifications.

Later, Patsy says she had a lovely time talking to a group of eccentric old ladies. 'They were so funny. But it was sad as well. I'd been told that one old lady used to be taken for Barbara Windsor. She said "Are you Barbara Windsor?" I said "No." Then she said, "Am I Barbara Windsor?" I felt really sorry. When you think of what old Jewish people have been through. I got frightened in there of being old. I wouldn't like to end up like that.'

It's a Sunday morning and we're in Petticoat Lane market. This is what Patsy thinks of as the 'real, unchanging East End'. The stalls are full of cheap clothes, novelty mobile phones, quality ties - four for a tenner - and the pervasive smell of frying onions. Patsy is surrounded by fans. She asks them questions and poses good-naturedly for pictures. She's spontaneous and unaffected, seeing her younger self in these kids.

One boy catches sight of Richard. 'You're a cab driver, aren't you?' he says admiringly. Richard nods. 'All my family are cabbies. It's a good living, isn't it?'

The production team has had more than they bargained for of the East End. Since they began filming they have been robbed blind - a camera was 'borrowed' from a gallery (it came back a week later); the cash float was nicked from someone's handbag; the producer's cashpoint card was stolen.

An interview is set up between Patsy and a local barrow boy, Frank, a shoe-seller who wears a whop-ping gold Star of David medallion, a Hawaiian shirt and a nice tan. 'The people that came here, Patsy, the only thing they knew how to do was sew petticoats. This is a true story. No one knows that.'

'Reallaaay?' says Patsy. She says that a lot.

'What you've got to realise is it's a little bit of paradise in the East End. It's the characters that make it, Patsy,' Frank continues. 'It's people like myself. I'm going to introduce you to a friend of mine. He's the only Jewish Asian I know.'

Patsy duly chats to Birra Singh, who is selling crocheted T-shirts. 'The Jewish shops are all still here,' he says. 'The owners travel in every day in their Volvos.'

'So why did they move out then?' Patsy asks.

'Because the Schwarzers moved in,' he replies.

The producer yelps. 'You can't say that!' Once again, the East End is proving a little too real.

Since leaving EastEnders, Patsy has starred in the BBC1 pilot for a detective series, McCready and Daughter, set all the way over in Kilburn. Next month, she is going to Australia to film a drama about a couple of London girls who go backpacking. She is not worried about being typecast as the feisty East Londoner. Kathy Burke, who has made it because of, not in spite of, her accent, is her role model.

'So far I've been very lucky, because what I'm like is what people have been interested in. So I feel very grateful that being myself has got me where I am.'

'Who were we watching the other day?' says Richard. 'Hugh Grant. He's never played anything else.'

'I said, "Hasn't he been lucky? He plays exactly the same person. And he gets away with it,"' says Patsy. 'I'd love to do different roles and I know I can, but I don't seem to get them because people like me as I am.'

Patsy (only close friends and family call her Julie - it creates a healthy boundary) is down-to-earth and seems unaffected by celebrity, particularly in this part of town where everybody knows who she is. We're sitting in a busy Italian caf? off the market. The waitress comes to take our order. Richard orders bacon, eggs, chips and baked beans. Patsy says, 'What kind of beans are they? I'm not being funny. I only like Heinz beans.' This unreasonable request is the closest we've come to a showbiz moment. The waitress just stares, pen in hand. Finally she speaks: 'They come in a tin.'

Patsy Palmer's Real East End will be shown on BBC Choice next year.

Local London: Tower Hamlets

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