Denise Black is a legend, and when she’s not starring in Coronation Street, Bad Girls or Queer as Folk, you’ll find her gigging with her band Loose Screw around the UK. But this is a first even for her, a musical, and she’s knocking them dead in Sister Act every night. Katherine MacAlister talks to the 53 year-old about singing, rocking and breaking away from Corrie.

“We’ve had a standing ovation every night and people have been dancing in the aisles. I’ve never been in a show like this before, but then it is my first musical,” Denise Black says grinning from ear-to-ear.

“I’ve done Calender Girls and Grumpy Old Women but everyone getting up and dancing is a new thing for me,” she smiles in delight. “You can even hear the hum of the audience before the show and within the first few numbers their jaws just drop. It makes me giddy. I had no idea everyone would be so up for it!”

For someone who was watched by millions every night in Coronation Street this might seem bizarre. But Denise’s career has been carefully constructed around her children, until now.

“They are now aged 20 and 22 so I feel it’s OK to go on tour for the first time. Before that everything needed to be bite-sized and a play on average is eight weeks long while with TV you can do it and go home at night...” she shrugs. “But they are backing me to the hilt because it’s not the average thing for a mother to do, go on tour for a year.”

So why did it take her so long? “Well I’ve done cross-overs between acting and singing before, but never a musical.

“I’ve been up for so many but it was never on the cards until now.

“Your career goes the way it goes, and when you land a part in Coronation Street it defines the product for a while. But I think I’m old and maverick enough now to do both.”

That Denise is having the time of her life is obvious. That this has been a long time coming is also evident, as is the fact that she’s nailed the part of Mother Superior. “Well, Maggie Smith played her in the film and Sheila Hancock in the West End, so I have completely reinvented the character.

“She is unshakeable, the voice of authority and she has the biggest journey to make,” explains Denise, pictured left with Sister Act co-star Michael Starke.

And presumably doing things out of the ordinary helped get her away from Denise Osbourne, her Coronation Street character.

“Well yes, because the way TV works is that you get lucky with a role that redefines you and then you get stuck with it and have to break the typecast. “So to get Sister Act was really exciting.”

So was she terrified? “Yes,” she says her face breaking into another huge grin.

“I felt like a donkey at a racecourse because this is a 100-mile-an-hour show.

“People are completely and utterly unprepared for what they are going to see because when the choir lifts off, the audience goes berserk. It’s such an honour to be part of it.

“It takes 100 people to put this show on every night so the scale of it is awe-inspiring and the band is to die for. But I don’t think I’d be doing this if I hadn’t been in the band gigging with Loose Screw because I’m 53 now.

“And singing is different to acting. Acting is pretending to be someone else but singing is who you are, and you have to reach people’s hearts. So it’s like coming of age really.”

And then Denise’s face cracks into another grin: “But then they do say life begins at 40 and I’ve been having a ball.”