Beales for life! Gillian Taylforth and Adam Woodyatt talk to Stacey Dooley

n the same night in 2015 that

Bobby Beale was unmasked as his sister Lucy’s killer, there was another bombshell dropped on fans that was, perhaps, even more shocking.

Almost 10 years after she was supposedly killed in a car crash in South Africa, Kathy pitched up, the picture of health. It would later transpire that she and then husband Gavin Sullivan had faked their deaths as part of an insurance scam.

Kathy’s rise from the ashes sent son Ian reeling. But offscreen, actor Adam Woodyatt was thrilled to have his ‘mum’ back. The pair hit it off from the start on the soap, and have been super-close ever since, as they reveal to Stacey Dooley on Eastenders: Secrets from the Square on Monday.

‘Our first meeting was on 14 August 1984, and because it was her birthday, someone got there late!’ recalls Adam.

‘Gilly burst through the doors, and we looked at each other and it was, “Mum!” and, “Son!” And that was it. Right from day one, we clicked. I’ve always called her “Mum”, and my daughter calls her “Nan”!

‘A couple of years further on, I’d be coming home from a night out, and I’d be going

Othrough Islington [in north London] on the way home, and she’d get a ring on her doorbell at two in the morning – “Mum, I’m hungry!”’

Gillian was just as delighted as Adam when Kathy came home, and not just because it meant being reunited with her ‘boy’. She’d been gutted when her character was axed.

‘When you play someone for so long, she’s part of your life, and I thought, “I don’t want her to leave me,”’ admits Gillian.

‘I got the phone call about the 30th anniversary. Dominic [Treadwell-collins] said, “You might know that Phil’s been going off to meet someone… and that someone is you.” I went, “What?” I just started crying. It was wonderful!’

Who could forget the jawdropping moment Kathy stepped out of that black cab and uttered those two words, ‘Ello, Fiw.’

‘The director said to me, “Don’t say it straight away, we really want to milk this moment,”’ says Gillian.

‘But I thought that I’d better hurry up or Steve [Mcfadden, who plays

Phil] will think I have forgotten my lines and he’ll say, “Hello, Kaff.”

‘I was like, “That’s my moment!”’ tells us. ‘For me, it’s usually how I interacted with a particular actor in a scene, and the ones that I remember can be quite tiny.

‘There have been so many of those that it would be hard for me to say which I liked the most.’

is taking a summer break and is scheduled to return to our TV screens on 31 August, but fans can rewatch classic storylines on E4, starting this week with the 1999 plot in which villain Rob Hawthorne held Ruth, Lewis, Tony and Lucy captive. is due to return to BBC1 in the autumn.

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