Coronation Street star Colson Smith has ruled out ever returning to the soap as a ghost or in a flashback.

The actor has played Craig Tinker for the last 14 years but tonight’s episode marked his final appearance after the police officer died after being brutally attacked by villain Mick.

Now speaking for the first time after his final appearance, Colson insisted that he wouldn’t be making a post-death appearance like so many of his other colleagues.

“Yeah, I did say I won’t be coming back as a ghost,” he said.

“I was like, the day I leave will be the day that I leave.”

He added: “It feels like it’s done. It feels like it’s finished, like I’ve got everything that I’ve got from Coronation Street and that’s it now.

“So it felt very much like a thank you, goodbye, goodnight type thing, because I know there’s no return for Craig and Colson in the future.

“I have spoke to people who have left and not been killed and I just feel like, for me, it was 100% the right way to kind of know that I’m not coming back.”

And speaking about the moment he found out Craig was being killed off, Colson said he was relieved.

“Weirdly, so when I was in the chat with Kate [Brooks, producer], I’d already braced myself for like what was about to happen,” he said.

“I have been in that building since I was 12 years old, so I know exactly how it works.

“So I knew that my time was up sort of thing, and I knew that Craig had backed himself into a corner that was going to be really hard to get out of, so I fully expected the chat to go that way.

“In the conversation with Kate, there had been about 20 minutes of Kate kind of talking to me, but we hadn’t touched on when or how, or who or what.

“So I kind of stopped Kate and said, ‘Look, I have two questions, and one is when, and two is, do I get killed?’

“And she kind of like, stopped and stumbled a little bit. And I said, if it makes it easier for you, the right answer for me is yes. Like for me to go, I would want to leave.

“I would want to die, I would want the door to be shut, so then I can kind of know in my head that Corrie has been this, Corrie has done that, and it is now done, and Craig’s journey is over.

“So in a really weird way, it was the right thing for me to be killed. I didn’t want that we might have you back, knowing that it would be very unlikely, and knowing that it would feel a bit like unfinished business and an unfinished job.

“I think Craig dying, and Craig dying in the line of duty as a copper, that kind of hero’s death was by far the most perfect story for the exit.”