ACTRESS, one-time member of the Loose Women, Celebrity Big Brother winner, reformed alcoholic, mental health campaigner, ex-wife of a fellow thespian, mother of a rock star, boy, you name it, Denise Welch has been there.

The woman famed for her roles as Marsha Stubbs in Soldier Soldier , Natalie Barnes in Coronation Street and Steph Haydock in Waterloo Road has many a public persona, but she was in Hexham to talk about two more additions to the list.

This was the book festival, so her novel, If They Could See Me Now , was the primary reason for her being in town.

But fresh off a plane from Los Angeles and glowing with delight at the very mention of her trip, BBC Newcastle’s Anna Foster started there. “What were you doing in LA?”

“Well, I made my first short film last year, a psychological thriller called Black Eyed Susan , for which I was both actress and producer,” she beamed, “and I’d just landed over there when I heard we’d won ‘best short drama’ at the Silicon Beach Film Festival.

“I’ve been an advocate over the years for mental health, having suffered from clinical depression since my eldest son Mattie was born, 28 years ago, so I wanted to produce a related drama.

“My mate Nick Rowntree, from Middlesbrough, wrote the script and directed it, Mattie wrote the soundtrack and my youngest son, Louis, is in it too.”

‘Mattie’, just for the record, is Matthew Healy, son of Tim Healy and charismatic lead singer of alternative rock band The 1975.

It was the post-natal depression Denise suffered after his birth that has gone on to give her life a very different hue – her increasingly public battles with alcoholism, a tack she described as “self-medicating”, masked an inner darkness that at times threatened to consume her.

“Most people will go on to make a full recovery (from post-natal depression), but I live with a mental illness,” she said. “Most of the time now I’m fine, but I still suffer.

“I’ve developed more successful coping mechanisms, but I’ve also taken alcohol out of the mix, which has helped – I’ve been sober for five years now.”

She lent her voice to the chorus of praise for Prince Harry and the way he’d talked about his grief over the death of his mother. “I’m an ambassador for MIND, the mental health charity, and it has seen a 40 per cent increase in traffic to its website since he spoke out,” she said.

But back to the book. Where had that come from?

She got the taste for writing, it seems, after penning her autobiography – the bestseller Pulling Myself Together – to tell it in her own words, without the tabloid spin that had accompanied some of her more public breakdowns.

She added: “I had this idea for an opening chapter, which got two publishers interested and before I knew it, I’d landed a two-book deal with Little Brown.

“It was only after the contract had been signed, sealed and delivered that I thought ‘Oh my God!’ I only had the one chapter!”

While If They Could See Me Now is a work of fiction, elements of her own life, “writing about what I know”, got her moving and the tale of Harper Clarke, outwardly successful, inwardly a mess, evolved.