Not your average JOE!

TV favourite JOE ABSOLOM on playing Emmerdale's latest villain

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EMMERDALE MON, 7.30PM, TUE, 7PM, & WED, 7.30PM, ITV1 SOAP

Joe Absolom has been a familiar face on our screens since he shot to fame as teenager Matthew Rose in BBC1's EastEnders in the late 1990s.

Fresh from playing gang leader Braden Moore in ITV1's hit drama Code of Silence, the actor is now going back to his soap roots... but it's Emmerdale, rather than Walford, where he's headed.

Here, in an exclusive interview, Joe, 46, tells TV Times why landing the role of drug dealer Ray Walters in the ITV1 staple was perfect timing...

Welcome to Emmerdale, Joe! What brings Ray to the village?

He turns up claiming to be starting a new farming-supplies business, but he's soon trying to find out where Mackenzie [portrayed by Lawrence Robb] is, so he obviously knows him. The next time you see Ray, he's surveying the delicate plants that Lewis [Bradley Riches] is growing, and you realise they are going to make him money.

He's not going round the streets selling drugs; he's that mid-level guy or higher, and I think most people are wary of him.

We understand that teenager Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle) will return, and that he'll start working for Ray...

Yes, he knows Dylan, because he met him when Dylan was living on the streets. So Ray pays him and sets up a relationship whereby Dylan runs errands for him and the drugs get distributed further.

You starred in EastEnders from 1997 to 2000. Did you have any apprehension about returning to soap?

I genuinely can't remember much about EastEnders, other than it was good fun. If I'm honest, I'd done