ACTRESS Liza Goddard is keeping good company these days. In fact she can often be found out and about sightseeing with Jesus Christ no less.

Well that's how the public tend to perceive him. In fact it is her co-star in the new stage production of the whodunnit Murder By Misadventure, Robert Powell.

Powell, it seems, has had the Devil's own job shaking off the Messiah image even though it is now more than 25-years since he made the TV film Jesus of Nazareth.

"We make sure than wherever we are playing we get out for the day and have a good look around," says Goddard.

"I don't tend to get recognised very often but Robert has people coming up to him all the time saying things like 'Hello Jesus' and 'Go on then lets have a look at your hands.' It's very strange."

Next week the pair might be doing a spot of sightseeing in Dorset when Murder By Misadventure arrives at Poole's Towngate Theatre tomorrow.

The show which has been on the road now for more than two-and-a-half months has been doing extraordinary business.

Goddard believes that a good solid, reliable whodunnit is just what the doctor ordered.

Audiences like it because it takes them out of themselves completely for two hours and in my opinion that's what I think theatre should really be about."

Indeed the show actually opened in Jersey on September 11.

"No one felt like going on stage but we did and everybody came. I suppose it makes you realise that whatever happens life carries on."

She also believes that it is time that television abandoned what she sees as a policy of ceaseless dumbing down and restored a few traditional values.

"There used to be such a lot of quality drama on TV nowadays. Apart from the Trollope on Sunday night, which is fabulous, there really is nothing worth watching.

"People should write in. At the moment they're voting with their fingers and turning off but unless they actually write to the TV bosses no one will do anything about it.

"It's ridiculous. When we did Bergerac we regularly used to get audiences of 17 million. Nowadays if you get nine million viewers people go beserk.

"I really believe that if there was good television people would watch it."