"I was up doing my last bit of filming in the village a few days ago and rain kept coming down," he laughs. "That has to be the windiest street in Britain!

"I'm not an expert and I can't work out how a village in a valley can attract the biggest winds - I don't know how that is possible."

It might be something to do with the fact that Emmerdale as we know it today is not a real life Dales village at all but a purpose built set on a hidden location on the outskirts of Leeds, not far from YTV studios.

Despite the chill of an unseasonably cold and rainy early spring, though, Paul insists that he's loved every minute of playing tough copper Shane Doyle - a man who's about to discover why crime doesn't pay.

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"You can look back on your life and there are a handful of jobs that you'll think were just great and this has been one of them," he says. "I'll seriously look at Emmerdale as one of the best times of my career.

"I remember when I was working at the Royal Shakespeare Company, I was in Richard II with Sam West and that was a really special company, one of those times when you get a group of people together and you produce something worthwhile.

"For me, it's been the same with Emmerdale. You do television and you don't know what it's going to be like, especially on a soap, but everybody there had a job to do and they have the best time possible while they are doing it. I was lucky to have four-and-a-half months there, It was such a joy."

He's based in London these days so one of the real attractions of the part was that it gave him a chance to return to his Yorkshire roots and spend time with mum and dad Barry and Denise, who still live in the former pit village of Hoyland, between Barnsley and Sheffield.

"My great grandad was a Geordie who came down to find work in the mines and stayed on in the area," Paul explains.


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