WHEN Wendi Peters was told that her character Cilla Battersby-Brown is suffering from osteoporosis when she returns to Coronation Street, the actress was a little sceptical.

"It sounds terrible, but the first thing I did was check that larger women can get osteoporosis, because I presumed it was frail old ladies," says the 46-year-old. "But actually, it often happens to people who are slightly larger, because (it can be) down to bad diet and excessive alcohol, so everything you'd associate with Cilla."

Bold, brash and morally corrupt, the character originally appeared in the soap for four years, from 2003 to 2007, but she made a huge impact. This is the woman, lest we forget, who put kind-hearted Rita in a prison cell for the night, after accusing her of assaulting her son Chesney (Sam Aston). "Being thrown into that storyline three months after joining, I couldn't believe it," Peters recalls.

A fan of scams, Cilla eventually found her equal in Frank Nichols, a wealthy but ruthless man she met while working in a nursing home. The pair left together for Las Vegas, but then Frank died, and using the money from a necklace he'd given her, Cilla set off to South Africa.

A DVD spin-off, Coronation Street: Out Of Africa, was filmed in 2008, in which she was reunited with Chesney and her daughter Fiz (Jennie McAlpine), but since then, very little has been known about her whereabouts.

"When she reappears, Fiz asks, 'Where've you been?', and Cilla says 'Wolverhampton'," reveals Peters, laughing. "I thought it was going to be somewhere exotic, so that did make me giggle."

It's Chesney who knocks Cilla for six because he's so hostile towards her, after all she left for Vegas without a backwards glance? Peters recalls watching those final scenes with her husband Kenny recently. "I wish I hadn't, I hated her," says the actress, who's decided to tone the character down a little. "She's seven years older, nearly 50, and I just felt we needed to find a little bit more reality in her," she says - and that include's Cilla's wardrobe. "There's still a lot of gold and it's a bit too tight, but she's not as brash as she was."

It was a complete shock for Peters to hear that Corrie bosses had been in touch with her agent about bringing Cilla back.

"I'd moved on," she says. "I'm thrilled to be back, but I've been very lucky since I left."

The return stint is only six weeks long, which "fitted perfectly".

One of the key factors in Peters leaving the soap in 2007 was to spend more time with her husband and daughter Gracie, who's now 14.

She doesn't regret missing out on aspects of Gracie's younger life, like the school run and ballet lessons.

"I don't think you can live with regrets like that. It was something at the time I wanted to do and I had to do. Everybody has to go to work and it just so happened that my work was 200 miles away," says Peters, who's from Blackburn but now lives just outside of London.

"I was lucky in the respect that my husband had retired and stayed at home and looked after her for those four years. I couldn't have asked for more. Dad was always there, even when I wasn't."

Following her departure from the soap, Peters returned to the stage and will soon be appearing in a production of White Christmas. "It's my way of getting my musical theatre out of me," she says, laughing.

And who knows? Cilla might make another appearance in Corrie in the future. "What's always dependent for me, is what they come up with, where it's going to go and how Cilla's going to be," says Peters.

"But you can never say, 'I'm not going back', because you never know how your life is going to pan out."

Coronation Street, Cilla's returns tonight at 7.30pm