KATHERINE Dow Blyton has not stepped on stage since playing the red-clad Ruby in Behind The Scenes At the Museum at York Theatre Royal in November 2000.

It is not that this fine northern actress has been "resting" but television came a'calling. "For the last three years I've been living in soapland," says Katherine, who joined Channel 4's Hollyoaks in May 2001 to play mother-of-four Sally Hunter.

She is not in soapland at present, on leave instead to tread the Theatre Royal boards once more, this time in Shelagh Delaney's classic kitchen-sink drama, A Taste Of Honey.

Soap fame has come her way since she last passed through the doors of the Walmgate rehearsal studios. "Yes, I've signed a young chap's arm in a pub and someone's Rizla packet! I get recognised an awful lot more than I thought I would. I do sign autographs and things like that, which is very nice, and I don't mind it at all," says Katherine.

"But then I can remember once running after Jimmy Nail in Edinburgh for his autograph in my student days in my early 20s, so I've done it as well. I think I told him it was for my dad."

She has encountered cheeky young scallies shouting "Hollyoaks is ****" at her. "Then sometimes you get someone shouting just 'Hollyoaks' after you in the street, and someone suggested I should shout back "No, A Taste Of Honey', to publicise this show," says Katherine, who lives in York and has digs in Liverpool too.

Through her playing a regular role in Hollyoaks, a wider audience has come to join York Theatre Royal and Hull Truck Theatre audiences in admiring Katherine's acting skills, and yet she nearly missed out on playing Sally Hunter.

"I wasn't even going to go for the audition," she says. "I was feeling miserable as I hadn't been very well but you get up and you do it, don't you? You're in this glass room, where there are 15 of you sitting and waiting, and it's like Pop Idol: you're picked out - 'You can stay, you can go' - and when I got down to the final two I really, really wanted it.

"So in one day I had acquired a family of four. Well, three teenagers at first. When I started they told me I had an older child as well."

Episodes of Hollyoaks are recorded eight weeks in advance of screening, time enough as it turns out for Katherine to take a break to return to the stage (Sally is off screen at present).

"The way the chance to do A Taste Of Honey came about was that last year I had weeks when I wasn't scheduled to do any recording. So afterwards I said to the series producer that it was a shame I couldn't use that time to do other acting as I hadn't known in advance that I would be free," she recalls.

"She said that it was OK for the 'older' actors to do other work as Hollyoaks was principally a teen drama, so between Mersey TV and Damian York Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden we have managed to work something out. Logistically it's been quite difficult because TV and theatre are such different worlds, but I really appreciate the opportunity.

Katherine, who turns 40 this year, will continue in Hollyoaks for "however long they want me". "There's a big storyline coming up because my son Dan is on trial for murder and his sister is testifying against him. It's just an everyday story of village folk, isn't it!" she says.

Whereas the Hollyoaks shooting schedule of five episodes a week precludes the opportunity for rehearsal, the world of repertory theatre affords Katherine a month of preparations for the role of irresponsible mother Helen in A Taste Of Honey.

"It's great to be able to do both because they're very different skills, and now I've been in television regularly, I really appreciate good television actors who can hit the mark," she says.

"With television you're reliant on the director and the editor and you're not in control of what's on screen, and you don't have the rehearsal process. So I'm enjoying spending this time with the script, working out the character and exploring the chance to move anywhere on stage... within reason!

"It's like a great sense of freedom, being able to stretch, though I love, love, Hollyoaks too."

A Taste Of Honey, York Theatre Royal, March 16 to April 3. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 15:33 Thursday, March 04, 2004