HOW C4 SOAP No Hollyjoke
Mocked early on, show led the way with gritty firsts
1In
the opener’s first five minutes, we saw police chase Jeremy Edwards’ character Kurt Benson through the streets on his motorbike, a car crash and an explosion, and a motherdaughter dispute ending in a broken glass bottle. It aired once a week at first but by 2003 it was on every weekday.
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The show is set in the fictional Chester village of Hollyoaks. However, the set may look familiar as Hollyoaks High was actually the same school as Grange Hill – so they missed a trick not having Mr Bronson or Zammo walking the halls.
4It
was the first British soap to tackle storylines such as death from anorexia, self-harm, right-wing radicalisation, same- sex domestic abuse, transgender teens, genetic sexual attraction, sudden infant death syndrome, pre-teen pregnancy and date rape.
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It was also the first soap to tackle male rape, when Gary Lucy’s character Luke Morgan was attacked in 2000. Not only was the soap applauded for showing its immediate after-effects but when Gary returned in 2017, it also explored the lifelong impact.
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It wasn’t until 2018 – 18 years after Luke’s original story – that Corrie followed suit with its David Platt male rape storyline. Likewise, the same year Corrie tackled male suicide with Aidan O’Connor – 17 years after Oaks had first highlighted the issue.
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But it’s not all doom and gloom. Hollyoaks has had 85 weddings over the years – of which 64 couples actually made it to tying the knot. The other 21 ended in drama before the “I do”.
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Talking of disaster nuptials... just as with
Corrie’s tram crash and Emmerdale’s plane crash, you don’t want to be in the scriptwriters’ bad books when it’s nearing the show’s big stunt week.
Four characters were wiped out in 2012 when a minibus crashed into a double wedding reception – including Maddie, who was sliced in half by flying debris. But little was as chilling as the immediate aftermath of the 2006 Dog On The Pond pub fire, which killed five. Who can forget student Zoe Carpenter calling best friend Joe, only to hear his phone ringing... from inside one of the body bags?
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The make-up team would go through 30 pairs of fake eyelashes each week. If the cast are g o i ng on holiday, they have to have gradual spray tans in the weeks before to avoid 9
Many other Oaks stars have tried their hand at Hollywood and hit the jackpot. Nathalie Emmanuel (Sasha Valentine) played Missandei in Game of Thrones before joining the Fast & Furious franchise. Her on-screen brother Calvin Valentine, aka Ricky Whittle, is in Amazon’s American Gods and Roxanne “Louise Summers” McKee (left) was in drama Strike Back. Hannah Ashworth actress Emma Rigby was in The Counselor with Brad Pitt, and Emmett J Scanlan, who played Brendan Brady, has done The Fall, Peaky Blinders and US hit Treadstone.
US HIT Ricky Whittle
tanning continuity issues when they come back. 11
At one time, the annual Hollyoaks Babes and Hollyoaks Hunks calendars used to be a major highlight for fans. After wrapping a calendar shoot in 2008, Jamie Lomas, aka Warren Fox, exclaimed: “Now I can stop going down the gym, and eat takeaways whenever I want!”
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The soap held the Guinness World Record for the longest
Because 25 years after it roared on to our screens with an action-packed motorbike chase, Hollyoaks has proved it is here to stay.
A generation has grown up with the scandalous antics of Britain’s deadliest soap and it has cemented its place as one of TV’s punchiest continuing dramas after tackling more firsts than most of the others combined.
So as creator Phil Redmond’s Channel 4 hit celebrates its milestone tomorrow, we bring you 25 things you probably never knew you didn’t know...
THE START OF IT.. Jeremy Edwards with Will Mellor
SOAPER STARS Nick Pickard as Tony Hutchinson with Linda Gray
on-screen kiss in TV history until 2013, when Ben Davies, played by Doctors star Marcus Patric, and Ellie Hunter, played by Sarah Baxendale, locked lips for a whopping three minutes and 15 seconds. That’s 10 seconds longer than the one in Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl video, by way of comparison.
Rachel Shenton, who played Mitzeee Minniver and is now on C5’s All Creatures Great and Small, has been busy since leaving in 2013 – earning herself a little award called an Oscar. Speaking of winning 2018’s Best Live Action Short for a film inspired by her late father’s hearing loss, she said: “I just told myself to focus on enjoying it and then they called our name. The rest of the night was a blur!”
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Hollyoaks has had cameos from Girls Aloud, Rick Astley, Boy George and Eamonn Holmes, to name a few. In 2008,
Andrew Lloyd Webber appeared in three episodes to give student Summer Shaw a role in The Sound of Music – a part which, in real life, went to the actress who played her, Summer Strallen. Strallen had been planted in the soap five months earlier as a novel piece of cross-promotion. 19
House prices must be dirt cheap in Hollyoaks village because its crime rate is out of control. At one point the village had a murder rate of 11 per 1,000 people, making it more dangerous than the world’s murder capital, Los Cabos in Mexico. It’s even had 13 serial killers in 25 years – including two at once. Of the most prolific was Toby Mills, who killed
HOT TO FOXTROT Gemma on Strictly, 2017 nine, and Cameron Campbell, who killed six on purpose and two by recklessness. There were even two OAP serial killers – Breda McQueen and deranged Silas Blissett, who knocked off five “sinful” women.
ALTAR GIRLS Steph, top, and Jennifer as Mercedes
play an autistic soap lead; and Scottish actress Amy Conachan is proud her character Courtney Campbell isn’t defined by disability. “This part is nothing to do with the fact I’m in a wheelchair,” she said. “It’s important to see a disabled person just living their life like they would normally.”
Well, it turned out her cousin was a serial killer, but that aside...