Ex-Coronation St star reveals car-jacking ordeal

Ex-Coronation St star reveals car-jacking ordeal (Image credit: PA Archive/Press Association Ima)

Former Coronation Street star Denise Black has said she once used her acting skills to negotiate her way out of a car-jacking ordeal. Denise, who played hairdresser Denise Osbourne in the soap, said she was in South Africa to film a drama called To The Ends Of The Earth when the incident happened. She was with a couple of other people when the car-jackers struck. Denise told ITV1's This Morning: "It was deeply deeply scary - we think we went over a trap and got a flat tyre and these people came and wanted to rob us, but they thrust us in the car and took us off the road and we were tied up..." The actress continued: "It was for a couple of hours, and I think only because we were actors we kept talking and were terribly polite and I think we negotiated our way out of there." But she said she knew that there was humanity there and if they just behaved themselves, "it was just a robbery". Denise, who is currently performing at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in her new show Bedroom Farce, said she had previously kept quiet about what happened, but no longer minded talking about it. She said: "It happened a long time ago - in 2004 - and I didn't tell my folks, it took me about 24 hours to collect my thoughts and tell my husband - I thought it would worry him. But the producers were amazing." Denise plays a suicidal patient in Doctors on Monday June 15 at 1.45pm on BBC One.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.