From stage to screen and beyond, this is a man with many career strings to his bow.

Catapulted to fame as the star of BBC talent show Any Dream Will Do in 2007, Lee Mead won the leading role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and his career has since gone from strength to strength.

He is currently very excited to be touring with his live show, which comes to Horsham next weekend.

“It is a great show, and it’s been a lot of fun,” says Lee, who will be performing a few songs from his fourth album, which is due to be released in the spring.

Audiences can expect cover versions of some of his favourite songs, including by bands such as The Beatles and Coldplay, as well as numbers from the shows, including of course, Joseph.

“I will be performing covers that I really connect with,” says Lee. “With cover versions it is important to bring something new to the song.”

It is a stripped back tour, in smaller venues, he explains, with the focus on vocals, although he is joined on stage by a four-piece band.

Lee’s is a hectic schedule for sure, as he has to fit the dates around filming five days a week in Cardiff for long-running television drama Casualty, in which he has a starring role as Nurse Lofty.

The demands of filming mean none of the tour dates are more than three hours drive from Cardiff.

“Being a singer I didn’t want to stop for any length of time, I wanted to stay on the road and do some gigs,” explains Lee.

“I often find that if I’m doing filming for quite a long time, I miss singing, and if I’m on tour I miss the acting.

“I feel lucky that I can do both.”

This is as far as Lee could get from childhood dreams of becoming a footballer.

“I wasn’t very good at football!” says Lee. “I started late as a performer and was in a few amateur shows around the age of 16, and from 18 to 20 I was gaining experience.”

Lee’s very first job was as a singer on the Portsmouth to Bilbao ferry, and he moved into musical theatre in 2004.

In a strange twist of fate, his first roles were in the touring production of Joseph And The Technicolour Dreamcoat.

It was while he was performing in Phantom of the Opera in the West End, that he auditioned for the television contest in 2007, one of 10,000 hopefuls.

“I had no idea that I would get very far, but I thought I had something to offer.”

The judges agreed, and Lee took the lead in Joseph, starring in around 600 West End performances over 18 months.

Shortly after the show finished, he released Any Dream Will Do and Close Every Door (songs from the musical), which reached number two in the download chart.

Lee’s first public performance, and he says, one of the highlights of his career to date, was at the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium in front of 70,000 people, where he sang Any Dream Will Do with Donny Osmond and Jason Donovan.

“It was pretty incredible to be on the same bill as Rod Stewart, Anastacia and all the big acts that were playing,” says Lee.

“They made a DVD which is great because I have a souvenir that I can show my daughter when she is older.”

Lee went on to star in other West End musicals including Wicked and Legally Blonde, and at the same time continued making music; his third album, Love Songs, was released in 2012.

The actor’s first television appearance was in a guest starring role in Casualty as a teaching assistant in 2011, before landing the part of Nurse Lofty earlier this year.

“TV involves longer days than theatre, you can spend 10 to 12 hours on set, it is very much a stop-start process, but I’m a technical person, so I like that.”

As for what the future holds for the performer who can turn his hand to anything it seems, Lee says that film is an avenue he would be interested to explore, but for now he is looking forward to playing Prince Charming in the pantomime Cinderella in Cardiff this Christmas (“panto is a chance to let go and have fun”), and the release of his fourth album, a collection of old show tunes.

“I have been asked for ages why I haven’t released a musical theatre album,” says Lee. “It has been done so many times before and I didn’t feel like doing an album like that.

“But I grew up watching the old school films like Guys and Dolls and Singing In The Rain, as we couldn’t afford to go to London once a month to watch them at the theatre.

“My passion for theatre came from those films and there are so many great songs from that era.”

He plans to tour a series of large venues to support the album’s release.

“I’m really excited about it - there will be a string section, three or four piece band and a nice tuxedo for me to wear.

“The best part of the job is getting to meet lots of different people, and make albums, and on the back of that I have managed to tour my own show.”