2024 National Television Award winning actor Peter Ash is back on the stage following his emotional exit from Coronation Street last September when his character Paul Foreman succumbed to motor neurone disease in the ITV soap.

After a short time off, Peter was in panto over Christmas in Oldham, just up the road from where he lives, and then it was into rehearsals for Picture You Dead, the latest stage adaptation from the bestselling novels by the UK's number one crime writer Peter James, author of the Brighton-based Roy Grace detective series.

Dates on tour include February 27-March 1 at Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre and March 4-8 at Theatre Royal Brighton.

“I haven't seen one of his stage adaptations before,” Peter says, “but I did the research and I loved looking into it. It's the seventh one that they've adapted for the stage and it's really exciting. I've never been in a crime thriller on the stage before. It is something new for me. I was not looking specifically for this but it came along and I thought it sounded really interesting and it's good to get back to theatre and touring – and it means I go to some places I've never been to before.”

The story of Picture You Dead was inspired by writer Peter James’s meeting with real-life art forger and now acclaimed copyist David Henty. Set in Brighton, DSI Grace investigates a cold case that leads him to the rarified air of fine art, but beneath the respectable veneer lurks a dark underworld of greed, deception and murder. When an unsuspecting couple unwittingly buy a potentially long-lost masterpiece in a car boot sale, they discover that their dream find is about to turn into their worst nightmare, and only Grace can stop them from paying the ultimate price.

Peter is playing the copyist: “He is a character that used to be involved in copying passports but he’s gone straight now. It is really interesting when you are playing someone based in real life.”

Previous to panto over Christmas, Peter hadn't been on the stage for probably ten years when he was in the War Horse tour from 2013-15. In between times he had six years on Corrie – including an exit that gripped the nation: “I was astonished by the way people responded to the storyline. It's incredible to be part of something that could raise awareness for such a good cause. There was a lot of pressure to get it right. People live with MND day in day out and you don't want to misrepresent it. You want to get it right but everyone involved in the storyline really went above and beyond to make sure it was right, and the fact is that people really did respond to it and took it to their heart. It was the proudest acting job that I've ever done. It was emotionally draining. You'd go home and feel that you've done a good day’s work but there was no way I ever expected it to go down the way that it did at the end.”

Would Peter fancy return to the soaps at some point? “You never say never. You never know what is going to happen next in this profession or what is around the corner. After Corrie I took a couple months off and then I went straight into panto rehearsals but I just like to keep busy. I just like to keep working.”