As she swings around to greet us from the make-up chair, with her trademark 100 watt smile, we are reminded once again how stunning she is in the flesh. But thankfully she’s also one of the sweetest girls we’ve ever met, and our own self consciousness vanishes as we have a good old natter about frocks and fellas, in between mouthfuls of delicious caramel squares.
The fabulous staff at the photographic studio soon make us feel at home, but we can’t help but feel a little disappointed at the fact that we’re not snapping the photos on the set of our favourite soap village today. So no chance of sneaking into Drive ‘n’ Buy to steal some Banana Bongo Flakes for us – well, we’d do anything to be arrested by hunky cop Calvin!
Speaking of Calvin, actor Ricky Whittle strolls in. At this point, we’re debating the pros and cons of various corn-based snacks with Hollyoaks press officer Gemma, and Jake Hendriks (Father Kieron) - who has already filmed his last scenes at Hollyoaks, and takes various calls from his agent about work ‘in the pipeline’ as they say in biz. When cheeky Ricky pulls up a chair to join us, he can’t help but get us back for all the hours we’ve spent grilling him this year by turning the tape recorder on us for an interview. Eeek!
All too soon the day sadly draws to a close - and while we’d love nothing more than popping to The Dog for a glass of vino, we have to make do with a pub at the train station. Things get slightly surreal though when Barnesy and Zoe – aka actors Tony Hirst and Zoe Lister - walk in. We can’t resist going over to say hi, and discover they’re heading to London too, to watch Zoe’s boyfriend, singer Mark Hole, play. As we fondly reminisce about an Inside Soap photo shoot Zoe did at Easter, she invites us to tonight’s gig – we obviously look like indie chicks with our dishevelled clothes and panda eyes!
Woo-hoo! This is one of the best days ever - we knew we’d be hanging out with the stars, but we didn’t expect them to make us feel like their bezzie mates. We’ll definitely be voting for them in this year’s Inside Soap Awards!
Posted by Katy Moon (Junior Writer), and Sarah Ellis (Senior Writer)
Want to vote for Hollyoaks too? Click on ‘Inside Soap Awards’ on the left-hand menu.
