How death becomes her

Amore extreme contrast with mortuary slabs, assorted cadavers, and the minutiae of forensic evidence would be difficult to conceive than one of

Terence Conran's little London indulgences, the Bluebird Cafe on the corner of the King's Road and Beaufort Street, which shrieks pampered Chelsea, designer chic, and stylish elitism.

It's testimony to the chameleon qualities of Amanda Burton that she appears perfectly at ease in both settings - the scrubbed workplace of her forensic pathologist, Dr Sam Ryan from Silent Witness, now returning in the last two-part Silent Witness film, Faith, with guest stars Prunella Scales and Matthew Marsh next week, and her rather exclusive ''local'' just over the river from Putney.

To be precise, we meet in the even more rarefied surrounds

of the Bluebird Club - members only - although neither of us qualifies, which invests the encounter with a conspiratorial edge.

Since crossing the water (that's the Irish Channel, not the Thames), she has always felt a bit of an outsider. No matter that

she has family and roots here, photographer Sven Arnstein and children Phoebe, 12, and Brid, 10, she continues to harbour a sense of being apart.

''I love it though,'' she adds hurriedly, just in case you think she's someone who's not nice to know. ''It's that Celtic thing of leaving your homeland and once you have done that you can rest anywhere. Maybe it's a lonelier

existence, but once an outsider, always an outsider. I'm a terrible butterfly and I like to experiment. I don't want to become too

snug. I don't think you could

categorise my life.''

The latter rejoinder is given almost as a polite warning. In her career, though, you could be forgiven for discerning certain character traits. Ryan and, previously, GP Beth Glover of Peak Practice are both strong-willed and independently minded females who take no prisoners.

''These are traits I can empathise with as a springboard, but if they didn't have these strengths then the drama wouldn't work,'' she says.

Ryan was her escape from the rural medical rounds of Peak Practice where she was more concerned with preserving life. She decided that 35 hours of the series was more than enough for anyone. ''You accept that if you take on such things they will hopefully have a shelf life. You can inject new ideas into each successive series, but there is a point beyond which you should not go. You should always

leave a character surviving rather than wilting.''

Silent Witness and Burton in particular display no signs of viewer fatigue. When the series proper ended, she has been

re-appearing in one-off specials such as the participation in the Crime Doubles season, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. At any rate, she would be reluctant to bid her farewell for good, in part due to the joy for once of being able to employ her own native accent. (In Ryan's history, the pathologist's family left Ulster and settled in Cambridge after her RUC-officer father was killed.)

Her own impetus for cutting loose from home near Londonderry was mainly due to lack of opportunity at the time for budding acting talent. At 18 she was accepted for a place at Manchester Polytechnic School of Film, TV, and Theatre. ''It was a struggle because I didn't want to leave my family behind. I have always been a home-loving kind of person. It challenged me and was probably one of the best things I have ever done. The arts were in my blood . . . from an early age I knew I wanted to perform, loved theatre, and attended as many cultural events as possible. Being jettisoned into a very confident English environment was a shock to my system and different from anything I had encountered before.''

SHE adds: ''It made me very independent, although that streak was very likely lurking there already. It was hard won, though. My natural inclination was to go back, and it was a comfort in my first year that home was only a boat journey away. Somewhere, though, was this primeval instinct that made me think . . . hold on, stick with it.''

She also had an emotional

reason for not returning home. She fell for one of her mentors, theatre school manager Jonathan Hartley and, despite disapproval in some quarters, they married the year before she graduated.

When she landed the role of the sexy solicitor Heather Haversham in Brookside, it was said the marriage began to suffer through her absences, and a break-up appeared inevitable. Then she met Arnstein when he had to photograph her on a professional assignment, and she moved to London to be closer to him. Their natures, she says, are both different and complementary. He tends to be harum-scarum; she keeps hearth, home, children, and dogs together.

What they share above all, she suggests, is an aim to live life to the fullest. Perhaps being in such close professional proximity to death has heightened her awareness. In a Lucy Gannon drama, The Gift, she played an ordinary woman on a council estate who has to cope with breast cancer, and what her death will mean for her family.

She determines, in particular, that she will not leave her daughter with the legacy of awkward memories that her own mother's death meant for her.

In Faith, Sam Ryan starts behaving erratically, which is put down to her health: she has been to a specialist who found a

shadow on her lungs - possibly

a tumour, and she is urged to

take a break.

''Death and cancer are such taboo subjects in our Western world. The Eastern countries are much more upfront about it, and see death as a journey to something better. Perhaps, because of our fading religious beliefs, we do not see it as a positive thing when people pass on. We are depressed about it, and the Celts in particular are morose,'' she says.

Being confronted with death in such a graphic manner and for such a sustained period for Silent Witness was almost as disturbing for her as it proved for her loyal viewers. Like the critics, they came round eventually to the

concept. She has never been lily-livered about what she con-

siders essential research. She has attended a real post-mortem.

''It has certainly changed the way I feel about my own mortality,'' she says.

''I've become much more spiritual than I thought I would ever be. You have to remember that the person has gone, and you are left with the fact their soul has passed on and what you are

looking at is the bare mechanics of the body.''

At one point, she has admitted, she had to run from the room because ''the stench from the body was so strong and I felt nauseous''. She started to have nightmares about her experiences, which she found worrying until she discovered that many pathologists dream about bodies, especially at the start of their careers. Experience has helped to assuage her fears.

Silent Witness pushed all the right buttons for audience approval. She has her own theories about why it has continued to hold such widespread appeal. ''For a start, it's very honest and bold, and it does address something we would rather bury. Sam is an enlightened woman and totally trustworthy. You would feel safe in her hands, although she is by no means an angel. She is deeply irritating to those around her, which probably is why she is on her own for a lot of the time. Those terrier-like instincts about her life and her job are difficult to live with, but I think those are the aspects that intrigue people.''

Burton, 43, appreciates there is a danger in playing too many volatile and

emotional roles. She admits that such preoccupations provoked ''deep thoughts about death. Mind you, I have a horrible feeling that I have always been obsessed with the subject as a result of all that Celtic darkness. The knock-on effect has been that a positive

feeling emerges to make the

best of your life. You cannot, of course, live your life thinking about death. You would become totally morbid.''

Morbidity and Burton, who is much given to hearty laughter, would be curious companions, indeed. She asserts she would like to lighten up professionally by trying her hand at comedy, which she hasn't attempted for years.

After being in periods of continuous employment, she always feels she has earned the right to a period of reflection and renewal. In a new BBC1 thriller, The

Whistle-Blower, she plays a banker who discovers a drugs money-laundering operation - and decides to reveal all despite putting her family in danger in the process. And the BBC has been

so pleased with the response to the recent exposure of Silent

Witness that it's unlikely Sam Ryan will hang up her scalpel for some time to come.

Burton says: ''It's important not to work . . . to return to your

normal self, whatever that is. Then, when a piece of work comes in, you can look at it from a different perspective and bring new slants to it. You have to come back to base to do that.''

l Silent Witness: Faith part one, BBC1 on Monday at 9.10pm and concluding

on Tuesday at 9pm. The Whistle-Blower, BBC1 in April.