HIS long list of TV credits is proof that Philip Jackson is one of the most familiar faces on television. “I don’t think I am,” he says when I suggest he’s on the telly a lot.

“But apparently I am. I try to just chase things that I have an interest in. It’s hard to be choosy as an actor but you have got to be.”

A week hardly passes without him appearing on ITV3, where re-runs of episodes from Agatha Christie’s Poirot seem to be on a loop. And Jackson’s Inspector Japp is usually there investigating – although beaten to solving the case by David Suchet’s Belgian detective.

“I haven’t done Poirot for nearly ten years but because it’s on all the time people think you’re still doing it,” says Jackson, during a break in rehearsals for a revival of Death Of A Salesmen at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds.

He recalls that writer Clive Exton championed Inspector Japp, even creating an off-stage persona for Mrs Japp, who never appeared on screen.

Jackson hasn’t been on stage for seven years and his “comeback” as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s play is a big deal. When we spoke, rehearsals were at “that very tricky area where you dip your toe in and start moving around”, he says.

“It’s a bit like wading through treacle.

Actually, better not say that. It’s a bit of a shock really because there’s a lot to take in and there’s a lot of stuff coming at you in the first act, lots of different things.

But we’ll be all right.”

Willy Loman is an iconic role on many actors’ list of roles to play. When he was asked by director Sarah Esdaile, Jackson went through various stages of emotion.

“Excitement, trepidation, fear and, in the end, joy because it’s such a fantastic thing. You just have to take a deep breath and say that’s what I’m going to be doing for a couple of months,” he explains.

He doesn’t have a list of characters he wants to play.

“I know a lot of actors say I want to play Hamlet or something like that but I don’t,” he says.

“I once thought I wouldn’t mind playing Iago in Othello. That passed. It has to as you get older. I don’t particularly want to play King Lear, although I was in King Lear a while ago when I played Kent.

“The first thing I said when I was talking to Sarah – who’s a fantastic director by the way – is that we shouldn’t think like it’s carrying all this baggage, that it’s a great classic. As far as I’m concerned we approach it as a new play that hasn’t been done before.

“It’s a family story very much, but it’s not like an episode of Emmerdale, so we’re not approaching it quite like that.

In the end it’s the story of human beings and how they completely ruin their lives basically.”

Loman is an ordinary man pulled down by the weight of the world. His life, his family, his finances are all getting on top of him.

“We did think about whether he had an identifiable mental illness, such as dementia or something like that, but we’re not really going for that one. It’s a crisis in his life and he’s thinking about a lot of things in the past, some good, some bad.

The play takes you into his thoughts, into his brain really.”

ONLY doing stage from time to time these days isn’t a problem for him.

It’s a bit like riding a bike, you never forget and, he points out, he did mainly theatre work when he was younger.

The stage was where his interest in acting began and doing something like Death Of A Salesman is a reminder that’s “what you joined for in the first place”, he says.

“I didn’t really do a lot of school plays, but there was a woman who ran a little group in our church youth club. I did a couple of plays with her and it crossed my mind it might be something to do if I didn’t get a proper job.”

He’s managed to avoid typecasting in the main, although recalls a period when he seemed to play a lot of coppers. “Not many salesman, though,” he says.

■ Death Of A Salesman: West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, April 30 to May 29. Tickets 0113- 213-7700 or online at wyp.org.uk

■ Agatha Christie’s Poirot: ITV3, tomorrow, 6.20pm.