Rat Woman Patricia Page who features in BBC One NI’s True North is one of Northern Ireland’s everyday superheroes

Such is her passion for pest control that the Londonderry woman has made it onto our TV screens – she’ll appear in tomorrow night’s episode of True North on BBC One NI, a half hour programme not for the squeamish but a truly fascinating and entertaining watch.

Coming to householders in their hour of need, Patricia and her crew are everyday superheroes, putting us at ease as they do battle with the terrifying pests who invade our cherished spaces.

Patricia said: “I was always fascinated by what my daddy did, you just never thought it was a job for a woman. Most young girls went into the factories, then the factories started to close down.

“I asked my daddy to give me a wee go, he gave me a week, I was in my element, one week turned into almost 30 years.”

She added: “There’s no two days the same in this job, that’s what I love about it. You meet so many interesting people.

“When I rock up to the door, first and foremost they’re surprised to see a woman. It’s a fantastic ice breaker.

“The line I usually get when I leave somebody’s house is, ‘It was lovely meeting you but I never want to see you again’.”

Patricia said it was important to take the customers’ minds off the task at hand: “You don’t go in with a big serious head on you, they’re terrified anyway. To go in and have a bit of craic, a bit of banter with them it tends to calm them down.”

She said that she gets no pleasure from exterminating pests, but it is a necessary evil: “I can understand completely that people wouldn’t like what I do but I am completely an animal lover. I don’t want animals to suffer but I know the problems they can cause, the diseases that they can carry.

“Rats can chew through water pipes, heating pipes and electrical cables. They can cause floods and fires – it sounds Biblical but that’s what they’re capable of. This is why they have to be controlled.

“The dead rats and mice can be recycled believe it or not. They go to a local wildlife centre to feed birds of prey.”

Her father Charlie, who started the family pest control business in 1975, appears in the programme, telling the story of an encounter with a “two-foot long baldy rat”.

“My daddy can tell you some stories, honest to goodness,” said Patricia.

Patricia and her wife Carmel have been married since 2010. They own three rescue dogs, but much as Patricia says she would love to keep a brown rat, “the line has to be drawn”.

• True North - Rat Woman, airs tomorrow night (Wednesday) at 10.40pm on BBC One NI. It is also available on BBC iPlayer