Soaps love bringing back former characters for that sweet, sweet nostalgia, and the actors are usually just as happy to reprise their roles. Former Emmerdale star Kelvin Fletcher, however, is not one of them.
The star played Andy Sugden on the ITV soap between 1996 and 2016, and outside of the show has dabbled in winning Strictly Come Dancing, race car driving, and running a farm.
And it’s his new life doing the latter, chronicled in the ITV show Fletchers’ Family Farm, that makes him not want to play Andy again any time soon.
Appearing on James Martin’s Saturday Morning over the weekend, Fletcher was asked if he misses the Dales, and his answer was pretty definitive.
“No I don’t,” he said. “Emmerdale was 20 happy years but there’s not a day goes by I’d ever really think about it, really.”
ITV
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“It’s a past chapter and I’ve very much moved on now”, he added, noting the irony that he played a farmer on TV and now he is one.
He did joke that Andy’s exit storyline saw him run away to Spain, so if he did return he could do so with a tan (and that Andy could have retrained as a chef, seeing as he was currently on a cooking show).
And although the actor won’t be returning to Emmerdale any time soon, Fletchers’ Family Farm has actually taken up the soap’s old 7.30pm slot on ITV1, with repeats of previous episodes edited down to fill the half-hour.
STEVE MORGAN//ITV
Related: Emmerdale star responds to fan confusion over Ray and Celia story
One character who recently returned to Emmerdale was Graham Foster, who spectacularly appeared in the Corriedale crossover despite being seemingly dead.
His comeback isn’t the only big mystery going on at the moment, as the identity of Ray Walters’ killer is the focus of all of this week’s special flashback episodes.
Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 8pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX and YouTube.
Read more Emmerdale spoilers on our dedicated homepage
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