Emmerdale's Kim Tate would be a clear winner if TV bosses ever think of staging a battle of the soap bitches. Those glossy American sharp-tongued divas with names like Alexis are all mascara and shoulder pads. Beneath her sleek blonde exterior, Kim is bad through and through as she proved time and again in ITV1's Yorkshire-set farming soap.

This is a woman whose exploits including cheating on one husband several times, plotting against him and finally letting him die as he clutched his chest during a heart attack. Like some icy assassin, she refused all his entreaties to pass him his tablets.

Other men were used, abused and discarded, although she usually hung on to their money. She hatched a plan to steal a stud farm horse and, fleeing with the proceeds, gave rival Chris Tate a thump and left him for dead.

Lady of the manor Kim was a true femme fatale, so it was a dark day in Emmerdale when she packed her bags and left as the new millenium dawned.

But for Harrogate-born Claire King enough was enough. Far from being a hard decision to leave, she says it was easy. "I'd done nine years and wanted to move on," she explains, making it sound more like a prison sentence than an acting job.

"I thought I'd explored the character enough. I'd explored every angle. She got camper and camper, which was brilliant. But you wake up one morning and think, 'I don't want to go to work'."

So Kim escaped the confines and heavy schedules of the soap world. "It's a bit of a sausage factory. When I left it was three episodes a week, now it's six," says the actress, whose marriage to Emmerdale co-star Peter Amory (who played Kim's stepson) broke up after her departure from the series.

She was lucky to move from Emmerdale to ITV1's women's prison drama Bad Girls as jailer Karen Betts who ended up as wing governor. Like Kim, she was not a sweet and fluffy character but one with a hard edge and steely resolve. For the actress, the series had the added bonus of not being a 365-day-a-year job as filming only occupied eight months of the year.

When she was released from prison after several series, King had no plans other than to keep working or "jobbing around" as she puts it. "It suits me better to a certain extent because I can concentrate on my dogs and horses, and actually live rather than work," she says.

Home is near Harrogate, where she attended Harrogate Ladies College as a young girl. She began her career in the music business, as a DJ in a Leeds club when she was 18, followed by time as a singer in the groups Fidea and To Be Continued. She lived in London for four years with Geoff Bird, alias guitarist Cobalt Stargazer of the group Zodiac Mindwarp.

These days she's happiest in Yorkshire. "I go into London for meetings and then get out. I live in an old barn in the country just outside Harrogate. I don't have children, I have Labradors and horses," she says.

You get the feeling that being a full-time country lady wouldn't be out of the question and she admits you reach a point where there's so much reality TV that it gets very depressing for an actor. "There's not enough work about for any of us," she says.

"It's good to have another passion. Racing is my other passion. I've been involved with horses all my life. I call them my public school children, although you have a chance of recouping a bit of the outlay.

"On days off, I always watch racing and go when I can. It depends when the horses are out."

Inevitably, one question that she's constantly being asked by fans (and journalists) is if Kim is going to return. "It's been seven years. I don't think so. I've not been asked. I suppose you never say never," she replies tactfully.

What she's being doing since Bad Girls is popping up in various programmes in guest roles. Among them is the new series of the Tom Conti crime drama Donovan, which returns to ITV1 tomorrow.

King features in the second episode - being shown on July 17 - playing the wife of a successful businessman who's found dead at his home. Conti's forensic expert Donovan becomes intrigued by the dysfunctional relationship between the dead man's wife Sally (King) and their son Rob.

"They're a wealthy family but she finds out he's actually lost the money. Then he dies under mysterious circumstances, so the finger is pointed at her," explains King. "She's very protective of her son, probably a little over-protective, so there's room for suspicion."

* Donovan returns to ITV1 tomorrow at 9pm.