Waterloo Road and The Bill star Alex Walkinshaw joins the Casualty team this Saturday (BBC1) as flirty nurse Fletch... Tell us about your new character, Fletch. "Adrian 'Fletch' Fletcher is a happily married man with three children, but he's a bit of a wheeler dealer. He used to be a mechanic, but lost his business in the recession so he decided to retrain as a nurse. Although he's new to the profession, he has a lot of life experience and gets on with the patients. He has a natural ability to chat and people warm to him." So he's a cheeky chappy who gets on with everyone? "Well, everyone apart from Lloyd who's his assigned mentor. Lloyd is expecting someone young and timid who needs to be talked through everything. So when this bloke in his 30s walks in who's flirty and capable, it's a bit of a shock." How do the doctors react to him? "He even gets on with the doctors who wouldn't necessarily be your first point of call for a laugh and a joke! When he meets Dr Zoe Hanna he immediately wonders why she's single and starts questioning her about it. He's not being nosy, it's just his banter." Is Fletch quite similar to you then? "Yeah, I'm quite a chatty, friendly sort of bloke and I thought it would be a lot of fun to play that because I haven't had the chance before." What kind of cases does Fletch have to deal with in the ED? "In his first episode, a young woman called Amy (Nikki Sanderson) comes in with a suspected pregnancy, but it turns out to be something else. He sees her as just a kid and wants to be supportive, but he ends up having to give her some bad news. He finds that really hard and that's something he's going to have to learn how to cope with." How did you get on learning all the medical jargon? "I'm very much an Aspirin and a plaster kind of guy so I don't know what any of it means. But my learning curve is almost vertical!" How long are you going to be on the show? "Well, I'm under contract for a year so after that, who knows? But it's a great part and over time you'll see that Fletch is a very competent nurse. He's a great addition to the team, but then I would say that, wouldn't I?"
