WEYMOUTH engineer Lee Curtis fuelled an army of fans when he appeared in a television advertisement for British Gas.

Now he is making a comeback to our screens in a new instalment of the popular adverts.

Lee, 27 first hit the headlines two years ago when he featured as an engineer fixing a boiler in a customer's house in Bridport.

It was so successful that he was invited to take part in another advert featuring a customer in Weymouth.

Lee said fame had not gone to his head and added: "I know the ads went down very well when they were shown the first time round.

"I had great fun making them and they proved a good topic of conversation when I turned up at customers' houses as a lot of people recognised me.

"Since then a lot of the customers I visit have asked me if I am going to do more TV appearances. I actually did three ads originally and one of them has not been shown at all, so maybe that's still to come."

Lee is sure the adverts he did have made life a lot easier by providing an easy point of contact with customers. He said: "People are much more at ease when I visit them because they know me from the ads, so it's a conversational ice-breaker.

"I've also been able to experience the fame that stars get.

"They can't go anywhere without being recognised and I've had a little taste of what that is like."

Have the ads changed his personal life? "I was single when I started filming and I have a girlfriend now, but it was nothing to do with my appearing on TV," he said.

The adverts are not his only television appearance. He appeared on the Kilroy chat programme about people with older mothers.