The location for FHM's cover shoot with Lisa Faulkner is a little unusual. A huge open-plan house in the middle of Kensington, it's the kind of quarters typically built by overpaid artists determined to bring their kids up in a "creative yet uncluttered" atmosphere. There is virtually no furniture, a bloody great model of a Boeing 747 stands erect in the kitchen, the toilet cubicle looks like a giant, circular tomb, and the hearth is stocked not with logs but perfectly polished wooden blocks.

Skipping about energetically from one side of the kitchen to the other, Lisa isn't fazed by the surroundings. Having spent most of last year filming in the purpose- built houses of Brookside close, she's quite at home posing for cameras in odd living spaces. Her character - eco-chick Lousie Hope - provided much-needed glamour amid the unremitting gloom spread by the likes of Ron Dixon.

But Brookside is not the reason she is shooting for FHM. The hope family made an untimely departure from the show a couple of months back, leaving Lisa unemployed for a full 24 hours. The 26-year-old signed up for BBC's new medical drama, provisionally entitled Holby, due to air in early 1999. Lisa is well qualified for the programme, having once played a surfer who suffered pollution burns in an episode of casualty.

Although set in the same hospital as Casualty, BBC bigwigs are at pains to point out that Holby is not a spin-off of the Bristol based show. Shot on an elaborate studio set, it features a completly new - an impossibly beautifull cast. As well as Lisa, there's former Coronation Street regular Angela Griffin, Nicola Stephenson (famous for kissing Anna Friel in Brookie), and, for the ladies, Michael French (David Wicks in Eastenders). It is, we are told, going to be very sexy. Which, considering the bed-pans, drunks and wheezing pensioners to be found in most British hospitals, begs the following question...

Can desire really flourish in a medical environment?

Well, there's definitely something sexy about a doctor. There's a real sense of authority in the way they say they'll make you better. It's a God complex, I think. Besides, hospitals have loads of little laundry rooms for doctors and nurses to have secret liaisons in - I bet they're all at it.

Every doctor or nurse has a story about a patient who "acidentally" got a loofah stuck up their arse. Why do medical dramas never feature this in their storylines?

Don't they? Well, I've only seen the first few scripts of our show, but I think there will be a few close calls like that. When I got the part, I did some research by asking a doctor friend about her job, and she about this guy who'd got the claw end of a hammer stuck up his penis.

What? In his Jap's eye? You're making that up...

I'm not. I'm not sure quite what he was doing, but he obviously having some kind of fun with it.

Nice. So what's your character going to be like?

I play a brilliant young surgeon called Victoria Merrick, She's super-intelligent, but has no idea how to deal with people because she's spent her whole life reading medical books. She's the sort of doctor who scares patients by telling them what they've got- but not explaining what it means.

Sounds typical. Have you ever been mistreated by a doctor?

No, but I've seen it happen. The last time I was in hospital, I was 16 and having my appendix out. I'd just started modelling, so I asked the surgeon to make a really neat incision so it wouldn't leave a scar. I woke up next to a plump girl who'd had the same operation. She had a massive line right across her stomach - it was horrible, she'd been gashed because she hadn't asked the surgeon to be careful.