Emmerdale star Michelle announces engagement to girlfriend Rosie

Emmerdale's Michelle Hardwick has got engaged to her girlfriend.

The actress, who plays vet Vanessa Woodfield in the ITV soap, revealed on BBC Radio Leeds that she proposed to Rosie Nicholl on New Year's Eve.

She said: "We were in Gran Canaria on holiday and it was about 9.30 at night and I got down on one knee.

"I'd had the ring for over a year. My mum is the manager of a jewellers so I'd had it sized and everything. I was thinking, 'I hope it still fits!' and it did. I was thinking, 'Her fingers will have swollen up with the heat of Gran Canaria', but it was fine."

Michelle explained she was planning to pop the question on Christmas Day, but was pipped to the post by one of their relatives, who called to say she had got engaged that day.

The actress, 36, has been dating Rosie for around two years.

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.