The bitch is back..

19 years after fleeing the village Kim Tate returns to Emmerdale & she’s got murder on her mind

She was the queen of the soap super bitches – and now Kim Tate is back with a bang after actress Claire King kept her return to Emmerdale a secret for an entire year.

The iconic character’s comeback after 19 years away was so cloak and dagger Claire even sneaked onto the set through a back entrance.

But she makes an explosive entrance into the Dales next Monday and wreaks havoc from the very first second in true Kim Tate style.

Talking of Kim Tate style, it will come as no surprise to fans to learn where she has been for some of the years she has been away – locked up in prison.

Claire, 55, who played Kim for 10 years between 1989 and 1999, says it was tough to keep her dramatic return under wraps.

“It was top secret. I told my mum and dad and my partner,” she explains. “But my name was secret on call sheets and scripts. I had to park round the back so fans at the front couldn’t see me. Everybody kept it really quiet.”

But finally roaring up the majestic Home Farm driveway in an Aston Martin DB9 supercar made it all worthwhile and brought memories flooding back.

Claire says: “I’m a Yorkshire lass anyway so it is like coming home. And the house hasn’t changed a bit.”

Since Kim fled Home Farm in a helicopter in 1999, fans of the Yorkshire soap have been desperate for her to make her return.

Claire went on to perform roles in Bad Girls, Hollyoaks and Coronation Street meaning she has hardly been off our television screens. She was offered the chance to come back to the Dales on many occasions but never felt the time was right – until now. Kim’s step-grandson Joe Tate has been in the village laying claim to her Home Farm empire, and while she has been languishing in jail she has been plotting her revenge, like only Kim can.

Claire says: “I’ve been asked back quite a few times, every few years it raises its head again and it just seemed right this time, because there was already Joe Tate in it. There is a Tate connection – it was easier than people thinking where has this random old bint come from, who nobody really remembers apart from two or three of the cast? It just seemed right.

“I got the call last year. It had been discussed and nothing was concrete, but then I somehow slotted into the stories and it seemed the right time.”

While no one could forget her as lady

DRINK IT UP Kim is back on her best evil form