DALES EXTRA

Sam Dingle may have had a treacherous time when he became impaled on a tractor spike recently, but James Hooton said he loved filming the gruesome scene; Sam’s first farming-related injury since he was attacked by a cockerel a while ago.

‘It looked ultra-realistic on screen, but the spike was basically made of foam,’ James, 49, tells us. ‘It was really interesting to film – we spent a whole day pretty much on one scene, which is unheard of in soap. I’d always wanted to take up the javelin, but it didn’t quite pan out the way I imagined!’