With an equally famous actor for a husband, and a son recovering from life-saving surgery, it's a wonder North-East actress Denise Welch finds time for her own career. Viv Hardwick reports.

DENISE Welch is going to find prison a welcome break after one of her most hectic years in acting. The 44-year-old is joining the cast of runaway ITV success Bad Girls, set in HMP Larkhall, while juggling life in three homes for herself, two children and actor husband Tim Healy, who is about to jet off to the Dominican Republic to film Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

She says: "Sometimes I do mind the frantic pace and I think 'oh God I'm sick of being away and I'm sick of Tim being away and being away from one of the kids for a week or two'. Then you talk to some of your friends, who are absolutely stunning actors and actresses, who have had a really bad one or two years. So you have to think you are grateful really because you don't know when it's going to stop."

She's staying at the couple's Northumberland home with two-year-old son Louis, who underwent life-saving surgery last November. She's rehearsing for play The Filleting Machine, which will mark the 30th birthday of Newcastle's Live Theatre next week. Healy is back at the couple's second home in Cheshire with their 14-year-old son Matthew.

The North-East pair moved near to Manchester when Welch was cast in Coronation Street as Natalie Horrocks, who ended up as landlady of the Rovers Return. Now Welch is arranging to rent a flat in London to film Bad Girls after Healy arrives back from completing what is said to be the AWP farewell, with the Dominican Republic masquerading as Cuba.

Welch runs through the itinerary ahead: "Tim and I are going to be like ships in the night. He's just finished Murder In Mind and then the idea was that he'd be in Cheshire with Matthew while I bring the baby up here. But he's had to fly to London to do a Comic Relief sketch with the Auf Wiedersehen, Pet boys, then to Dublin to film with U2 on Monday and then up here to do a reading on Wednesday night.

"In April, I'm doing a daytime show for Carlton for ten weeks and Tim goes to the Dominican Republic to film AWP, which was going to be in Cuba but whoever is in charge thought it might not be the wisest place to be with what's happening at the moment.

"He comes back in September-October and I start filming Bad Girls."

Ironically, the Bad Girls job was first on offer when Welch's Corrie career was taking off.

She says: "When Bad Girls was just an idea on a piece of paper the producer asked me to do it, so we're talking four years ago now. I'd just been asked to be the landlady of The Rovers and because, at that point, Tim had said 'I don't want Matthew moved again' I decided we'd stay with the landlady thing.

"Four years on I am going to be doing Bad Girls. They're just finishing a series off now and I don't start until the next series while the writers create a character totally for me, which is very nice."

The couple are determined to find time to celebrate Live Theatre's three decades of life. Healy was a founder member of Live and first met Welch when she auditioned, as a 21-year-old.

She says: "I first met Tim during an audition for a play and I had to do an improvisation scene with him. I remember thinking what a clever actor he was.

"My life was in London at the time and it was about eight years before I came back to work in the North-East. I'd known Tim all that time but we didn't really like each other that much. But it was at a dinner party in 1988 where I met Tim again and he took me home and that was that. So you could say our relationship was a slow burn."

During The Filleting Machine run, Healy will also be on stage to talk about his involvement with Live Theatre and pay tribute to 80-year-old playwright Tom Hadaway.

Welch says: "It's emotional for Tim because he was a founder member of the company and Tom is one of his favourite people. And that's what swayed it for me, even though I can't afford to be away for six or eight weeks doing theatre for financial and personal reasons."

She did find time to attend last Wednesday's Donny Osmond concert at Newcastle's Telewest Arena and says: "I got quite emotional when he sang some songs because I remembered how important he was to us in our youth. We're all delving in our bags for our glasses and poor Donny is looking around at all these middle-aged women with glinting spectacles in the audience."

* The Filleting Machine runs from Wednesday until Sunday. Box Office: 0191-232 1232.