Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Carina Lepore
Lockdown stories for veteran stars to beat set ban
It’s 17 months since Nelly
Rowe (Lennie James) rescued vulnerable Grace while seeking missing daughter Jody. Could Grace give clues to Jody’s fate, or will she derail Nelly’s quest, with consequences for him and those around him?
Suranne Jones and Stephen Graham are joined by Lesley Manville in Sky’s Save Me Too, out on DVD on June 8 – and we have 10 copies to give away.
Email tv@sundaymirror.co.uk by 6pm on Saturday with
SAVE DVD as the subject, plus your name and address. Standard Reach terms apply.
What I’m watching...
I’ve gone back to Desperate Housewives, starting from series one. There are so many episodes. I’ve watched it every night with my sister since lockdown started.
Top family shows...
We watch Mr Bean or Fawlty Towers. My boy Lucas is a bit of an old man child – he loves the old-school shows. He loves Basil and Manuel.
Favourite childhood shows...
Rugrats and Recess. I’ve even got Lucas watching them now.
Carina opened second bakery Dough Bakehouse, in Beckenham, south-east London, this year.
Ken Barlow FaceTiming daughter Tracy Barlow? Audrey Roberts joining the Platt family for a
Zoom quiz…
Could this be the new look Coronation Street?
Bosses are looking at how to keep golden oldies such as Bill
and Sue Nicholls on screen when filming restarts.
With Emmerdale stars back in front of the camera already, Corrie is soon set to follow suit.
But ITV head Kevin Lygo has banned older actors from returning to the set until social distancing has eased – possibly months away.
Now show chiefs are working hard behind the scenes to figure out how to
Team Barlow’s keep them actively involved in the storylines.
in charge of the ITV soap, has confirmed it will include references to the pandemic when they return to filming next month. And sources tell Talk TV they have been looking at different ways to use senior cast members while they self-isolate at home. One told us: “Bosses know just how important these characters are to their millions of fans.
“And who wouldn’t love to see the likes of Ken, Evelyn and Roy taking part in a Zoom quiz night? “Or Tracy calling her dad and telling him how much she misses him. There are good ways to do it, and that’s what they’re looking into at the moment.”
Some of the Street’s biggest and most popular stars will be affected by the rules when filming starts next month.
Bill Roache, 88, Barbara Knox, 86, Sue Nicholls, 76, David Neilson, 71 and Maureen Lipman, 74, will all be banned from the set.
Maureen, who plays Evelyn Plummer, revealed she has already urged bosses not to “ditch the oldies”.
She said: “I had a word with the producer online and I said, ‘Don’t ditch the oldies because the oldies are what Corrie is about. Otherwise we might as well call ourselves Hollyoaks.’
“They said, ‘We’ve no intention of doing that’, so I said, ‘Why don’t you just let me and Roy [Cropper] sit in a garden somewhere and have a conversation about Donald Trump’s hair’.”
says she and her partner have turned into iconic soap couple Dirty Den and Angie Watts in lockdown.
She says she and Tom Child have been bickering as they work on YouTube series Dun Breedin’.
Co-star Denise Welch revealed on Kate Thornton’s podcast: “We’ve got a WhatsApp group.
“Tam said, ‘In all the time me and Tom have been together we haven’t argued, but this has turned us into Den and Ange’.”
Tamzin, 49 – who played Mel Owen on the Beeb soap – also told how she swerved an awkward chat with daughter Flo, seven.
She said: “We had to do a scene when Tom had to say to me, ‘You need an orgasm’. Flo was going to shoot it – but we ended up just putting it on the tripod because I couldn’t bear spending an hour explaining what it meant after.”
Blushes spared there… and got around lockdown obstacles to film a fourth series of cooking show John & Lisa’s Weekend Kitchen. Saturday, ITV, 11.35am.
is still trying to get the Trigger Happy movie made – 20 years after the show first aired. He said: “We sort of planned to do it but every time we were asked by Pathé to come in and give a script I said, ‘Well, there isn’t going to be a script because I want to make a film with no narrative arc, because that’s what ruins it.’ If you make the film of Trigger Happy you have the big mobile guy goes on holiday and falls in love and it’s just s**t. I just want a
series of big stunts.” tv@sundaymirror.co.uk