Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bobby Norris
Star faked a nervous breakdown to get show axed
Nail-biting thriller The Secrets She Keeps stars Downton Abbey’s Laura Carmichael as Agatha, a woman desperate for a baby who sets her sights on pregnant mummy blogger Meghan (Jessica De Gouw).
Agatha becomes more and more obsessed with Meghan’s “perfect” life. But under the surface, problems with her highflying TV exec husband mean Meghan has plenty of secrets of her own. The Secrets She Keeps is out on DVD tomorrow. We have 10 copies to give away.
Email tv@sundaymirror.co.uk by 6pm on Saturday with SECRETS DVD as the subject, plus your name and address. Standard Reach terms apply.
What I’ve been watching…
And and The on Netflix. I get scared with horrors, but I feel brave now I’m with my partner. thrillers
Series I loved…
I’ve been going back over old
Telly icon…
shows and early episodes of
He’s a national treasure. He’s been in my living room since I was a kid, from GMTV to This Morning. And I’d love to sit down with Kris Jenner over a cosmopolitan, and put the world to rights.
Dream TV role…
My own telly chat show.
Fay Ripley says she gave the performance of her life – faking a breakdown to get out of a telly job.
The Cold Feet star admits lying about her mental state so she no longer had to front Channel 4’s Sofa Melt – a “cruel” 90s relationship chat show.
Fay, 54, explains how she hatched her escape plan after a jilted woman was humiliated on the show.
She recalls: “Once we had three women who’d been going out with their partners for years, and their partners had never asked them to marry them.
“So on the show we got them to propose. Two of the chaps said yes, and we got a vicar on immediately.
“Out he came to marry them – we’d got all their friends and family there.
“But one poor woman, he said no. We made her, in her ill-fitting wedding dress, go to the other two’s weddings. She cried all the way through both of them. And it was cruel. I got out of the show.”
She says: “My agent told me, ‘They might want to commission another 60 of these shows, and they might want to call it Faye Ripley’s Sofa Melt’.
“It was all going to ramp up. I said, ‘OK, just go with whatever I do. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown. Just go with it’.
“I went in and just literally had a nervous breakdown, and went, ‘I’m unstable, I can’t do it. All these people’s lives mean too much to me’.
“And because I showed that, they took it off the slate.” Speaking on food critic Jay Rayner’s Out To
Lunch podcast, Fay says she was proud of her convincing performance.
Asked if it was the performance of a lifetime, she replies: “Absolutely. I always want a round of applause. My agent thought it was marvellous.”
Sofa Melt, screened in 1999, lasted for one 60-episode series. One critic at the time said: “It’s just unmissable because the people on it are hilariously stupid.” By then, Fay had made her TV breakthrough as Jenny in ITV’s Cold Feet.
But she originally wanted to play the character, Rachel.
She says: “I thought I’d read for the part of Rachel, which was the pretty, love interest everyone fancies. “I was shocked when they said ‘Can you read for Jenny?’ I was like, ‘What? The mouthy northern one?’ Now I’m very pleased I played Jenny.”
Quiz king nearly died when he got QI… Quite Intoxicated. The smart-talking TV veteran says a few sips of a strong beer brewed by monks came close to killing him as it triggered his extreme asthma – but he was saved by comedian pal Ben Elton.
Stephen, 62, explains: “As soon as the fluid touched my throat I recognised the signs.
“By the time I’d put the glass down I could barely breathe.
“That’s how quick the reaction can be. My lungs just seemed to completely close down.”
Quick-thinking Ben hailed a cab to get the TV legend to hospital.
Stephen says: “The next thing I recall was waking in a recovery room, oxygen mask on my face, concerned eyes peering down. It had been a close-run thing.”
Stephen recalls the moment in book Dear NHS: 100 Stories To Say Thank You.
Looks like made a pretty penny when he sold up his Corrie home to move into a retirement complex this year. His Salford terraced house is today valued at £148,527 – and while he may have sold to daughter Tracy at a discount, its value has increased by 11,221 per cent since he bought it in 1960 for £1,312.