Ex Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding to join Coronation Street for four episodes

(Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Former Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding is to join the cast of Coronation Street for four episodes over the summer.

Sarah will make her guest appearance in the episodes, but the exact details of her storylines are being kept under wraps. She will apparently play a feisty character who is going to make life difficult for troublemaker Tracy Barlow.

Sarah said: “I am extremely excited to be joining Coronation Street. As a fan of the show it is a huge honour for me to join the cast. I can’t wait to get started!!”

Sarah is no stranger to the world of acting and has starred in Bad Day, the BBC television film Freefall, Run for your Wife and St Trinians 2: The legend of Fritton’s Gold. She will start filming in May.

Coronation Street producer Stuart Blackburn said: “Sarah is proving to be a gifted and exciting actor and I'm absolutely delighted to have her on board, the viewers are in for a treat as her character will be right at the heart of a massive new story for the Barlows.”

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.