PETER Kay dons a ginger wig to play Eric, a bumbling drayman who plucks up the courage to ask Rovers landlady Shelley out for dinner in Coronation Street.

Shelley, played by Sally Lindsay, thinks things might be looking up when he takes her to a swanky restaurant.

But the date goes downhill when the pair go back to his house for a coffee -- and Eric reveals he still lives with his mother. The battleaxe mum, Dolly, is there to make sure the evening turns into a total disaster.

Kay agreed to the cameo role because he and Sally are old friends. Corrie bosses first asked him to play a probation officer who would take off Les Battersby's security tag.

Then he suggested the Shelley storyline because he thought she needed a date to cheer her up after her split from love rat Peter Barlow.

Peter said: "I have always been a huge fan of Coronation Street, I think it's hard to live in the North-west and not be.

"I've been brought up with it all my life and it still amazes me that everything stops when you hear the Coronation Street theme at 7.30pm.

"I haven't seen the end product and would rather wait until when it's actually on telly. No doubt I'll hear the theme from the kitchen while I'm washing up and come running in as usual."

Sally said: "Peter is one of my best friends, we've known each other for years. It really is a very funny episode."

Peter has appeared in the Street once before -- playing a shopfitter working in the corner shop in November 1997.

Last week he and wife Susan celebrated the birth of a baby boy, Charlie.