Former Corrie star Rupert Hill on his booze battle that has inspired new play

Former Coronation Street star Rupert Hill remembers all too well the moment he realised alcohol was starting to take a grip over his life. Actor, writer and pub owner Rupert noticed that enjoying a glass or two here and there had started to spiral into an addiction three years ago.

And, from that day on, he vowed to learn as much as he could about alcohol addiction to break his growing dependency. Now, his experiences of learning to live alcohol free have partly inspired his new play, Husk, which gets its world premiere at Hope Mill Theatre in Ancoats next week.

Rupert, 46, from Chorlton, says: "It's three years since I gave up alcohol and I'd describe myself before then as being a high functioning alcoholic. I was working as an actor and managing to keep it under relative control, I also own some pubs in Manchester [The Castle, Gullivers and Lloyds in Chorlton] so it was kind of easy for me to be around alcohol and for it to be completely normal.

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"It was a big part of my life for a long period but then all of a sudden I started to realise, 'oh I'm starting to have a drink in the morning to get through a hangover', or 'I'm needing a drink in the middle of the night because I can't get back to sleep without one', and then I was starting to drink while I was working as an actor in private - it was becoming more and more secretive."

Rupert decided to educate himself as much as possible on alcohol addiction as his way to crack the problem. He adds: "I started reading lots and lots of books about alcohol addiction because I wanted to learn about it as much as possible and I didn't really think I was going to need to