AN actress and presenter who mingles with the stars yet keeps her feet on the ground is a rare commodity. DAVID HIGGERSON finds one -- Natalie Casey, the Rawtenstall girl whose current career in music is a far cry from her first TV appearance. IN the showbiz world, it is foolish to unveil your ambitions in case you don't quite achieve them.

And that is why Natalie Casey has picked a fairly mundane life goal.

"I don't want to die here. I want to end my life somewhere hot. It's too cold to die here," she said. It is a goal she will probably achieve, given the 21-year-old's current success in making a go of what she wants to do.

Rawtenstall born-and-bred, Natalie is currently the presenter of one of music satellite channel MTV's most popular programmes, Daily Chart Live.

Before that she had been one of the key characters in Channel Four's teenage soap Hollyoaks, playing the chatterbox Carol. It is the kind of success which could make an impressionable young person rather big-headed and aloof. But not Natalie. Speaking at MTV's Camden Town studios, she regularly stops mid-sentence to make sure she isn't sounding "luvvie."

She said: "I am doing this because it is what I am good at, or think I am good at.

"At school, I wasn't anything special. I didn't like sports and about the only subject I was good at was history.

"I had always enjoyed acting and performing so getting a part in Hollyoaks was like a dream come true for me."

But that's not to say that the attraction didn't wear off after a while -- and it is thanks in part to her parents, who still live in Rawtenstall, that she left the show. "My dad always says that if you get to the point where you don't want to get up for work in the morning, then it is time for a change.

"It had got to that point with Hollyoaks. After five years, I decided to do something different. I just needed a change. It wasn't the people there or the programme. I think it was just me.

"There is no point doing something if you don't enjoy it. Fortunately, something did come up, a sitcom on BBC-2, which was fun, and then MTV came along."

Natalie first presented Select MTV -- a programme where people ring up and choose videos -- and then producers devised a show around her, giving her the chance to meet people on the street.

Daily Chart Live involves counting down the day's most popular music as well as quizzing people on the street about their music knowledge.

Natalie adds: "It was flattering to know they had devised a show around me but it was also a challenge because I obviously had expectations to live up to.

"Doing the live thing is really good. You never know what is going to happen next. No-one has ever said anything which has taken us off the air, but there is time yet. That would be good. I think that would be fun. I'd certainly go down in history as the presenter whose show took MTV off air. After a couple of weeks of thinking about everything I said and trying to impress everyone with what I said, I decided just to be myself. That is best. People can like me for what I am or just forget it. The result has been that, while I have a lot of people saying they enjoy the show, a lot of people have a go at me for criticising certain artists or say I am rubbish. I ask them why they watch the show then. It shuts them up but at least I know they are watching."

Her outspoken views on certain artists have resulted in her being heckled in the street by a group of Atomic Kitten fans. Natalie said: "It was like I had offended them personally! They just get attached to the hype. When I was their age, I didn't have money to buy CDs by the current fad band. Youngsters are attracted by the publicity and not the music. So many bands are looks and nothing else."

After such a tirade, it seems appropriate to mention the TV show Popstars and the band it produced, Hear'Say. My pencil shakes as I prepare for the response.

"I loved it," Natalie enthuses and I promptly fall off my chair. "I was hooked to it. I sat on the edge of my seat during it. I loved it. Part of it was the fact so many people who appeared could not sing. I was like 'do they really think they can sing? Someone tell them please.'

"I also went to classes with Suzanne from the band and I was so pleased when I saw she had made it. I was rooting for her because I knew her."

Natalie's determination to remain down-to-earth does have its downside. She rarely goes back to her home town now and when she does she avoids going out.

She said: "I don't like going out in Rawtenstall now because people will come up to me and talk to me because they recognise me from television. They don't know anything about me. In London you can walk down the street in a bikini and no-one would look twice. That's what I like."

Natalie's first-ever claim to fame was being the youngest ever recording artist to enter the charts, when Chick Chick Chicken reached number 72 in 1984. She explained: "My sister (actress Anna-Jane, 29) had been asked to go on Saturday Superstore and I went on with her. I was singing that song behind the cameras and they liked it so I ended up on the show. They then released it as a single. It was a total mistake.

"I will take that to my grave with me. That fact crops up everywhere."

Looking to the future, Natalie has several ideas: "I hope the work continues, there is no reason it shouldn't.

"I wouldn't mind running my own production company. But one thing is for sure. I don't want to die here."

With that, she disappears off to her studio, preparing for another afternoon of live television which will invariably result in her falling out with another "so-called music lover."

"But they keep watching," she adds.