EastEnders' Cheryl finds love with toyboy

EastEnders' Cheryl finds love with toyboy (Image credit: BBC)

EastEnders actress Cheryl Fergison has found love with a Moroccan toyboy nearly 20 years her junior. The 44-year-old actress, who plays Heather Trott in the BBC1 soap, was introduced to Yassim al-Jemoni, 25, via friends on a social networking site. She has been to visit him in Morocco, and is said to be "very, very happy". Contrary to claims, he is not a goatherd, but works in a shop as part of his family's business. A friend said: "Cheryl and Yassim are very, very happy but it's still early days and they are not engaged yet." Cheryl split from husband Jamshed Saddiqui two years ago. Coincidentally, her Walford alter ego was also romantically linked to a younger man - teenager Darren Miller, with whom she had a baby. Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk’s weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop

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.