DS Debbie McAllister isn't the first role that the actress Natalie Roles has had in The Bill. Once she was a cat burgular's accomplice and another time she appeared in a Burnside episode (I'm about to start trawling through my tapes trying to find out where she appeared.)
Since she was 11 she's studied and worked in Performing Arts: she studied at the Bush Davis Arts Educational School in Sussex until she was 17 and joined the RSC when she was 22. She's appeared in commercials and bit parts. After starring in a Clockwork Orange and Moscow Gold, she carried on working in television, and has appeared in Men Behaving Badly, the Rover adverts and an American film called "Nightwatch" alongside Pierce Brosnan!