REBECCA Peyton is a woman of many words, but speaking to her it is clear she chooses them carefully.

Talking about her one-woman play, Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister, she says the inspiration came from the experience of losing her sister, Kate.

“It’s based on her death,” she says, before correcting herself. “Her murder, and the effects of that.”

When Kate Peyton, aged 39, set off for a journalistic assignment in Somalia in 2005 she was well known and respected within the BBC.

She had built a reputation for reporting from Africa, having relocated to Johannesburg.

However, within a day of arriving in Somalia’s notoriously dangerous capital Mogadishu, Kate was dead.

“The day she arrived in Mogadishu she was standing outside her hotel and someone drove past and shot her in the back,” Rebecca says.

“They operated on her, but she died from the blood loss.”

No one was apprehended for Kate’s murder, although it made headlines worldwide at the time.

Rebecca says that the family were told a certain warlord had ordered her sister’s killing, but that it was impossible to prove.

“We knew straight away that there wouldn’t be a question of bringing anyone to justice,” she says.

Despite this, the more Rebecca talked about her sister’s death, the more she realised she wanted to plumb the feelings she had to create a play.

“I’m an actor first of all, so it’s very natural to me to think like that,” she says.

“My Dad died when I was six, so I’ve always been very interested in death and trauma and all those things which are unpalatable at dinner parties, but which to me are the stuff of life.”

People’s reaction when she tells them about the show is often one of fear, she says, but until they see it they don’t always understand that it is not the morbid experience they might expect.

A natural performer and storyteller, Rebecca sweeps the audience up with her.

“There are parts which are very funny,” she says. “Funny and…”

Warm?

“Yes, that’s the word. Warm. People are surprised that it is funny, but we all have conflicting emotions all the time.

"People identify with what I’m saying. I don’t use fancy talk, I’m saying things that people can relate to.”

Choosing the title was one of the most important parts of writing the show, and one of the most difficult.

Rebecca says she was stumped until a chance conversation provided inspiration.

“I do look like Kate,” she says. “It’s quite strange for people who knew her before she died but didn’t know me when they do meet me.

"But sometimes when I laugh I hear her, and that’s very strange, because she’s dead.

"I was telling a friend about it in a bar one night and I just thought, ‘that’s it, that’s the name of the play.’”

The play is largely based on Rebecca’s reminiscences about her sister. Did it help the grieving process to write about her?

“I don’t really think of grieving as a process,” Rebecca says.

“It’s more a way of life. What has been amazing and life-affirming is meeting all these other people with their stories.”

• Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister is at the Octagon, Bolton on March 18, £8/£6, 01204 520661; then the Met, Bury. May 4.