Loui Batley, 22, has had an unusual four years. She gave up her dream of becoming an Olympic swimmer when she discovered that her mother had slept with her boyfriend. Then her next boyfriend began an affair with another man. She hardly noticed because she was too busy delivering her 15-year-old sister’s baby on the kitchen floor. So she took up modelling and had a passionate romance with her friend’s physics lecturer. Several other disastrous relationships finally led her to admit that she prefers women to men. She then decided to leave Liverpool, move to London and buy a pub.

All right, so all of that happened to Sarah Barnes, the fictional character Batley plays in Hollyoaks, Channel Four’s TV soap — except the last bit about moving to London and buying a pub. That didn’t happen to Sarah, but to Batley. She and her partner, Simon Lawson, bought a pub recently on Earls Court Road in the leafy Kensington area of the capital.

Batley was brought up in Rivington, Lancashire, and met Lawson, an actor and photographer, when he joined Hollyoaks for a brief spell to play the part of a swimming pool lifeguard. The two were soon going out, then living together.

“Amazingly we have never had a row,” Batley says.

“We just seem to get on with each other,” Lawson says.

That is just as well, because their new life together seems a big step. “The pub was being sold by a friend, and it seemed like a great opportunity,” Lawson says.

Buying a pub is like an extreme form of live/work, but the pair took the plunge and moved in during May. “We thought it would all be sitting around having drinks with friends, but the reality has been a bit different,” Batley says.

The Princess Victoria, built in 1890, sits on a corner plot and has its back to an apartment block. The only access to the couple’s four-bedroom flat upstairs is through the bar, so coming and going entails chats with the regulars. They have kept the two staff, who have been running the bar for two years, but feel duty bound to help when things get busy. Incredibly, neither had pulled a pint before buying the pub.

The move is a practical one, however. The life of an actor involves a great deal of uncertainty, and if you are going to have to get a bar job when you’re “resting”, it may as well be in your own bar.

“Also, the amount of space we are getting to live in is incredible for this neighbourhood,” Batley says.

They paid £180,000 for a 25-year lease and an extra £20,000 for the bar paraphernalia. The couple were able to look at two years’ of accounts before buying, and business is slightly better than the accounts suggested. They pay a monthly rent of about £4,400 and are required to buy beer from Scottish & Newcastle.

“It’s not a big bar, so we are never going to make a fortune, but it makes a profit and allows us to live rent free,” Lawson says. The couple also plan to use the bar for film and fashion shoots to bring in extra money.

Lawson and Batley have been hard at work transforming the flat, including the replacement of an ageing bathroom suite. They have had parental help for delicate jobs such as retiling, but they are not shy of getting out the paint brushes themselves. “I went to work with paint in my hair once,” Batley says. “The make-up department was not pleased.”

The actress will move into the Princess Victoria full-time next month and start London-based film and TV work as well as working on the pub.

“We want to put in a pizza oven and open up the street frontage,” Lawson says. “If you want to come in and have a pint, that’s great. Or come in and have a cocktail. We’d like a good mix of people.”

I was there before opening time, so I can’t vouchsafe for the beer, but the coffee was excellent and the two chihuahuas were friendly. The couple’s plans for the future seem admirable. It’s hard work, but it should be a quieter life than that of Batley’s Hollyoaks alter ego.

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