Dixon’s a class act in her new role

APPEARING on RTÉ last week,

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar deflected host Claire Byrne’s question when pressed on a solution to the massive job losses by saying that ‘a friend of mine is an actress who has gone back to teaching’.

Now the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal that Varadkar’s ‘friend’ is none other than former Fair City star Jenny Dixon, who has dusted off her teacher’s books and returned to Zoom classrooms in between auditioning for roles and learning a new language.

Jenny, who won a legion of fans for her role as the loveable Kerri-Ann in Fair City, is not ditzy like her character was renowned for being. In fact, before she pursued a career as an actress, Jenny was a science teacher who spent her days in school labs teaching physics to her pupils.

But with filming on pause due to the pandemic, Jenny has reprised her role as educator after a chance encounter with a vice principal on the hunt for talented teachers.

‘It’s like two worlds colliding. I am doing some part-time teaching. I was out for a lunch celebrating my one-year wedding anniversary and we were out having a bridesmaids’ and mums’ lunch,’ she recalls. ‘It was a double celebration because I had just signed to a UK agency. So I was telling the story of how the UK agent came about and one of the mothers who was there, she is a vice principal, and it came up in conversation that I have qualifications in teaching. So she said, “Oh, would you be able to do some work for us?”

‘Then the next day I got a call [from the school] to see if I could come in.’

And not content with just teaching and auditioning for upcoming roles, Jenny has also turned pupil herself and has taken to learning Chinese.

An opportunity came up when they were looking for more people to be adept in speaking Chinese.

‘So I’m learning Chinese at the moment,’ she said.