JASON Durr is in laughing, booming, voice as the former Heartbeat heartthrob talks about the image he presents to the world these days.

Gone are the sexy bike leathers to be replaced by a tweed suit, a little Homburg hat and a waxed moustache that only aged Belgians could consider cute.

Thankfully, the ensemble is not based on personal choice but is in fact the standard uniform of his latest theatre creation, the iconic Hercule Poirot.

Jason is starring as the Belgian detective in Agatha Christie's espionage classic Black Coffee, in which a quintessential English country estate is thrown into chaos following the murder of eccentric inventor Sir Claud Amory - and the theft of his new earth shattering formula.

"I love affecting the Belgian accent," says Jason.

"As for the moustache, I've spent the year playing different characters who all seemed to have had moustaches, and thankfully my wife doesn't seem to mind.

"And it has to be said, Poirot's moustache is iconic, it's all part of the show."

Jason's talent has been in evidence a great deal over the years on stage and in TV dramas such as Lewis and Midsomer Murders.

Yet, he didn't set out to be an actor. Growing up in Hong Kong, the notion seeped into his soul.

"When you're part of a minority, an ex-pat community you try and become involved as much as possible and my parents did this via amateur dramatics," he recalls.

"It was a release for them. And so I was immersed in all these classic English plays from an early age."

He smiles; "I guess I wanted to become an actor even before I knew I wanted to become an actor."

Jason adds: "I was never that academically gifted at school, the only thing I seemed to excel at was acting."

Jason was later diagnosed as being dyslexic.

Jason left home at 15, spent a couple of years in a further education college in London and was lucky enough to find a teacher who could teach him how to learn.

At 18, he landed a place at drama school.

"I loved it," he recalls.

"This allowed me,for the first time in my life to immerse myself in the world I wanted to be in."

Jason, who is married with three kids, had grown up with Shakespeare and Pinter plays; he understood great writing. But now he could read it as well in script form.

"To start it was tricky, but you overcome that," he says.

In recent years, he's faced some terrific acting challenges.

I had a fantastic time playing Tony Blair in a satirical comedy, Follow My Leader," he recalls.

"The challenge was to inhabit a character who's star was on the wain. And it was brilliant.

He adds, laughing: "It worked so well I ended up getting hackled from the audience. They believed I was Tony Blair. And I would talk back to them as Tony."

Did the essence of Blair seep into his very being when playing him? Or when playing a detective does he find it easier to find the car keys in the morning?

"Acting is a perverse marriage; he says, grinning.

"It's as much about the audiences's reaction as what you give them.

"Yes, I did watch hundreds of videos of Blair to try and get inside the man. And I read up a lot on Poirot. You have to tick the boxes of expectation in the audiences mind, yet at the end of the day it's about truth - and having fun."

Jason loves the range of characters he gets to work with.

"With Sherlock Holmes, again the writing was great. And it gave me the chance to get into his mind. I've got to be able to get up there and feel there is something different enough for the audience and me to be interested.

"But while it's great to land a role in the likes of Heartbeat, I really love it when people say they enjoyed the sociopath I played in the Lydna La Plante drama, Above Suspicion."

He doesn't take his characters home with him.

"Certainly not the sociopaths," he says. "You just leave them behind in the film studio or the theatre."

Unless of course the wee moustache is real and you see it first thing every morning, a reminder you're a Belgian nosey parker?

"Yes, but an iconic one," he says, laughing.

l Black Coffee, the King's Theatre, until Saturday.