Kate McNab's Ministry Of Entertainment theatre company started out 10 years ago with the home front in World War II Bristol and the West as its theme.

A good move, since older audiences love wartime nostalgia, and the war is now firmly on the school curriculum.

So a lot of strategic planning and market research went in to the decision?

"Not really," Kate replies. "I went into it with Joe Hobbs, another Bristol actor. He's a World War II boffin, he's got sheds full of uniforms and props, so it just followed on from there."

Such are the quirks that shape what we do in life. In this case, it would be great to report that today the company is a billion-pound conglomerate. Kate, desperate to buy a new van, would certainly settle for that. Instead, all we can say is that the Ministry is now sailing busily and imaginatively into its second decade, and not every two-hander theatre group can say that.

This is a world of one-nighters in village and Sunday school halls, followed by late-night dashes back to Bristol or an overnight in a B&B.

Lynton, Chepstow, Broadoak and Cerne Abbas in Dorset and Bordon in Hampshire all beckon, while seven shows in five days at Bristol's Tobacco Factory in November are a rare exception.

Some of Kate's earliest theatre memories are of St Andrew's hall, Clifton, and half the performances she does now are in places like that.

Kate says: "You arrive and some lady gets the key to let you into this chilly place, but before you know it, the lights and the people are warming it up and everyone is having a lovely evening."

Well, usually. At Zeal Monarchorum in Devon, the lady who measured up the stage for the scenery got her metres and feet mixed up.

There was nowhere to change, either, apart from a paint store with an old rug hanging up as a nod towards the actors' modesty.

Another hall was plunged into darkness midway through the show, and some joker shouted: "Put 50p in the meter". Except he wasn't joking. That really was what was needed.

Kate – in her early 50s and the kind of lady for whom the word "feisty" was invented – began her stage career with the three-part harmony group Sweet Substitute.

"We were in the style of the Boswell Sisters from the early Thirties, and as jazz festivals always needed a bit of skirt, we were in demand," she says.

"I've been in the business for 30 years, and a dozen of them were with Sweet Substitute. We were Radio 2 regulars and recorded and toured with Georgie Fame on his Hoagy Carmichael Stardust Road Show.

"What really hit us was the demise of the jazz clubs. When Angie Masterson fell ill (she has since died of cancer) she was replaced by Suzie Knowler, but what finished us was when Teri Leggett, who had six children, found it impossible to go on.

"I joined Groove Juice, a band Sweet Substitute had sung with, which had been started by the Blue Notes pianist Ralph Laing."

For the transition to actress/singer, she owes a debt to Andy Hay, a fondly remembered Bristol Old Vic director. She had done a course in dance, drama and education at St Matthias College in Fishponds in the Seventies, but it was Andy who recognised her potential.

She first worked with him in Up The Feeder, Down The 'Mouth, ACH Smith's evocation of central Bristol's dying dockland, and appeared in both the Theatre Royal 1997 version and at the former Industrial Museum in the docks four years later.

"I was a prostitute singing Our Ship's Coming In when the great doors opened behind me and a real cargo ship sailed in to view and turned in the dock, with the sun setting behind Cabot Tower and the whole cast on the dockside," she recalls. "That was the best thing in my life."

A good deal of other Old Vic work followed. But, best of all, it was in Feeder that Kate met Joe Hobbs. They decided that, as regular work would never be easy to find, why didn't they do the show right there and form a company of their own?

Joe introduced her to his sheds crammed with wartime gear, and the rest is history.

Vital to the set-up from the start has been Kate's partner, the guitarist Kit Morgan, with his ingenious synthesised soundtracks. And let's not forget mum, Lorna McNab, the Old Vic's wardrobe mistress for 15 years and as supportive as ever at the age of 76.

Joe was born in Bristol and raised on his family's wartime stories, and by the time Kate met him he had spent seven years with Ralph Oswick's weirdly brilliant Natural Theatre Company in Bath.

The Ministry's first production was Keep Smiling Through, set in south Bristol in the 1940 Blitz, and drawing strongly on Joe and Kate's interviews with local people.

Joe is still the group's principal writer, but his acting days ceased abruptly when he was asked to be assistant wardrobe designer for Band Of Brothers, a 10-part World War II TV mini-series co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, no less.

His place was taken by Ross Harvey, another Feeder veteran, who stayed with the Ministry for nine years and has only recently been replaced by Mike Akers.

Shows in which Ross co-starred included Doodlebugs And Bogeymen, the tale of two kids on a farm in Devon; Yes, We Have No Bananas, set in Weymouth just before D-Day and Mrs Gerrish's Guesthouse, a flashback to Weston in the summer of 1958.

"We're at our best with plays that show ordinary people in extraordinary times," says Kate.

The latest show is Goodbye Mrs Chips, set in a public school: "She's the dinner lady leaving after working there since the Thirties, in fact, running the place with the caretaker. For her retirement she gets a presentation egg mallet set."

A what? Kate shrugs, as if to say: "That's Joe Hobbs for you. I just act this stuff."

Mind you, she has a tale or two of her own. Her family came to Royal York Crescent, where she still lives, before the war, and her grandfather ran the Navana photographic studios, latterly in St Augustine's Parade.

"We lived in several flats here long before it was posh," she says. "It was more arty-tarty in those days.

"One of my earliest memories is of the view from number 13's balcony, and there were bars on the window of my attic bedroom at number 30. The front doors were open all day and the kids were out in the garden at the front or up on the Downs.

"Nobody knew where they were. At teatime, the mums would call on the doorsteps with no idea whether they'd be heard.

"We played in the basements and cellars. Nobody lived in the basements then (today, she and Kit are among those who do). We thought number 28 had blood on the cellar walls. We reckoned a captured German had been tortured there, manacled to rings in the wall left over from the slave trade."

People say brilliant things about the Ministry Of Entertainment – so when is the big breakthrough coming?

Kate waves a dismissive hand. "I know the world I inhabit," she says. "I can't be bothered to try for television – writing off time after time and getting constant rejections. Ross, who was with me all those years, has gone off to try to be famous, and I wish him well. Me? I'm just happy doing what I'm doing."