PETER Amory had hoped to have got the muck of Emmerdale out of his nostrils for a few months by finally ditching the role of Chris Tate in favour of a theatre tour. Sadly, nearly 14 years on the high-profile ITV1 soap has left him a marked man.

The Harrogate-based actor, famous for his wheelchair-bound wickedness five nights a week, found life outside the fictional dales equally difficult when a tabloid newspaper accused him of having an affair with former co-star Samantha Giles - who has just made a brief return to Emmerdale as Woolpack barmaid Bernice Blackstock. With Amory married to another former Emmerdale co-star Claire King, who played Chris's mother-in-law Kim Tate, the public could be forgiven for confusing fact and fiction.

King and Amory are claimed to be living separate lives at the converted barn they share in High Birstwith, North Yorkshire.

Amory, who stars next week at Billingham Forum in Trap For A Lonely Man, bravely agrees to answer questions on any subject during a lull in rehearsals at Horsham... until asked about those particular newspaper headlines.

"I know I have a very well-known face, but I really feel my private life is private and I don't really want it discussed in the media," he said, but acknowledged that he is likely to be more closely watched away from the TV set than most other stars.

Would he like to set the record straight concerning himself and Claire King? "It's not up to me to comment on it. The newspapers can put what they want. This kind of interest is not what I can put a stop to and this situation is very difficult and I cannot go further that that," he responds during a mobile phone conversation next to a busy road.

The 41-year-old is focusing all his attention on dusting off the cobwebs surrounding his theatre skills, which he last used back in the 1980s before making his TV breakthrough alongside Neil Morrissey in Boon.

"I am very nervous about knowing you have to get your lines right first time every time, but I'm getting lots of encouragement from my co-stars Sally Ann Mathews, Geoffrey Davies and Michael Tudor Barnes," he admits.

His co-stars in Trap For A Lonely Man have all appeared in high profile TV shows themselves - Mathews in Coronation Street, Davies in Doctor In The House and Tudor Barnes in EastEnders. Amory takes the lead as Daniel Corban, who arrives at an isolated chalet in the French Alps and becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding his missing wife.

The plot is certainly as nail-biting as his departure from Emmerdale in September last year, when his character took poison to ensure that his lovecheat wife Charity was charged with murder.

"Yorkshire Television was very good about things. Once the company realised I didn't want to come back in six months or a year it led to me being killed off for good.

"What is weird is hearing my character's name still being mentioned in Charity's court case last week when I've been dead for months."

Originally, Amory thought he was heading for heroics as part of the Tate Haulage empire being introduced to Emmerdale back in 1989.

He explains: "Chris Tate started out as a nice guy around the Christmas tree with the rest of the family, but after about six months the scriptwriters thought 'bugger this, Chris is going to be totally bad'. I was glad because nice guys are difficult to sustain whereas horrible characters are better."

Amory later became the rarity of playing a wheelchair-bound person on mainstream TV with the challenging task of making Chris Tate an evil-natured disabled person.

The actor was happy to use his fame to help charitable causes but stresses: "It was important for people to remember I wasn't really disabled myself. But I did gain an insight to the world of the disabled. Access remains a huge problem and I discovered that other actors treated me differently when I was in the wheelchair. They would change the way they talked to me when I was standing up in rehearsals to when I sat in the wheelchair on set and we had to sort that out," he explains.

Such was the impact of his character that a website dedicated to Peter Amory asked visitors to vote on a rating of 1-10 for Chris Tate from "A big softy with a bad reputation" through to "Downright evil".

Away from Emmerdale, Amory has had to cope with public interest and comments: "I was always being asked in the street where I'd left my wheelchair and told 'I never knew you were so tall' and although people would often say 'I don't watch Emmerdale' they would always know more about the latest plot than I did.

RADA-trained Amory didn't retreat far from character at Christmas when he swapped sopaland's rural farm and estate for the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare to play the evil Abanazar in Aladdin.

At the moment, Amory is aiming to seek other TV work after joining Ian Dickens Productions Ltd for the current tour but admits even high-profile soap baddies can't scare up work when required.

* Trap For A Lonely Man runs at Billingham Forum from Monday until Thursday. Box Office: (01642) 552663

Published: ??/??/2003