WORCESTER born actor Daisy Badger is enjoying her first season with the Royal Shakespeare Company; but her voice will already be very well-known to fans of The Archers.

Daisy, a former pupil of Bredon Hill Middle School and Prince Henry’s High School in Evesham, grew up in rural surroundings, at Church Lench, and now she’s playing Pip in the long-running radio drama about everyday rural folk.

Daisy, aged 28 said: “The Archers is a joy; an absolute joy! Pip is one of the few lady farmers on the show, and she does love her cows.”

With the RSC, Daisy plays Lady Landsworth in a late seventeenth century play, The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, by Mary Pix, which deals with the eternal British obsessions of money, class and status. What else would our national obsessions be?

Daisy said: “Mrs Rich has money, but she wants the status of a title, whereas I have both a title and loads of money.

“My character has no interest in climbing the ladder because she’s already there. I just have fun. It’s a gift of a part.”

The RSC is officially describing this remarkable play as: “An undiscovered gem, combining mischief-making and mind-bending plot twists.

“Unlike Aphra Behn, a fellow female playwright from the late 1600s, Mary Pix has been almost lost to history. But like Behn’s The Rover, a sell-out success in early 2017, Pix’s comedy of manners has a sharp satirical and distinctly female wit. Her colourful cast of characters dupe and dissemble as the intrigue builds.

“Will Mrs Rich ever squeeze her way into high society?”

Mary Pix wrote one novel and at least seven plays.

There seems little doubt that Pix was well ahead of her time, by making the role of women central to her art.

Daisy said: “The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich is a play that really champions women. She puts women at the heart of the narrative.”

With the television show, Doctors, Daisy was again very much at the heart of the narrative, for one episode, when she played “a Shamanic healer who was also a fraudster”.

She said: “Doctors was fun: it was the finest show to do!”

And stalwarts at The Swan in Worcester may remember Daisy from a few years back when, for a brief while, she would sit in on rehearsals and help with the cues.

Daisy went to Edinburgh University, where she studied English and developed her great love of theatre by performing at the Fringe Festival.

From there it was a short step to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. and afterwards, three years ago, her first big break was with The Archers.

The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, directed by Jo Davies, opens today, (Friday February 23) at the RSC’s Swan Theatre.

It will then enjoy a run, and indeed a long overdue revival, until June 14.

Further details at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-fantastic-follies-of-mrs-rich/