When I speak to former Brookside actress Claire Sweeney she is on the road to Nottingham for an evening performing her show, Sex in Suburbia. The new mum sounds cheerfully excited about the night ahead, and I can hear her eight-month-old son Jaxon burbling in the background.

It is remarkable she is so upbeat, as along with her motherly duties she has a gruelling schedule demanding a host of performances all over the UK this spring.

“It’s your job isn’t it,“ says 43-year-old Claire who has recently reunited with Jaxon’s dad, 29-year-old Daniel Riley, who runs a marketing company in Liverpool.

Jaxon and his mum are inseparable. And the Liverpudlian admits she wouldn’t do the shows if Jaxon couldn’t come with her, and says: “I absolutely love him. The best bit is the love you feel, just love isn’t it? It’s not hard loving him. It just comes naturally. Instinct kicks in, doesn’t it?“

The perils of motherhood and the experience of being pregnant have been worked into Claire’s show, which is set in a radio studio where the DJs dish out relationship advice to love-sick callers.

The former Loose Women panellist explains: “I talk about the perils of pregnancy and when I had him. I was just talking about the funny things that happen to your body – you start sprouting hairs everywhere, you can’t see your knees, and you get lines on your belly.

“I had the most gorgeous pregnancy and loved my growing bump and being able to eat what I wanted,” says Claire, who went through the anxiety of having two miscarriages.

In Sex in Suburbia, which is packed full of raunchy story lines and classic tunes such as Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman, Claire plays a relationship expert who is on-hand to help the main agony aunt, played by Lindzi Germain.

The show is the first written by the West End performer, although she hasn’t done it alone and worked with close friend Mandy Muden to pen the script around two years ago.

“It’s all about the eternal subject of love and romance, and the quest to find Mr Right through a series of mainly unsatisfactory dating experiences,“ says Claire. “But we’ve tried to take the bad out of the date and make the audience laugh by helping them to see the funny side.“

The musical theatre star confesses much of the inspiration came from stories her friends would tell about dodgy dates they had been on.

“We’d tell each other what had happened and get over the horror of the experiences by laughing about them,“ says Claire.

One of her worst dates was an encounter when she was 16 with a young man from the gas board.

“He picked me up in his gas van and took me to the local pub and I had a lovely strapless dress on and a pair of my mother’s panty girdles and I remember I ordered a blackcurrant and lemonade and pack of peanuts and I sat down and my dress all ripped open from the back and fell forwards,“ recalls the star.

“The nuts went everywhere and I remember I asked him to take me home, I was so upset. I walked up the path backwards because I was wearing really big knickers.“

The mother now considers herself less prone to dating embarrassment, saying “you just care less“ as you get older.

However, she is not too keen on modern-day dating styles and explains: “Nowadays people give things less time. Nowadays everything’s so quick with the internet and Tinder. People are less patient.“

So who’s the love of her life? “My son Jaxon,“ responds Claire, without missing a beat.

  • Beck Theatre, Grange Road, Hayes, on Saturday, May 2 at 7.30pm. Details: 020 8561 8371, becktheatre.org.uk