High drama as Donna Windsor exits Emmerdale forever

These are the dramatic final scenes which see Emmerdale's Verity Rushworth bow out tonight after more than a decade playing Donna Windsor in the show.

Her character, who's had two separate stints in the long-running ITV rural soap, heads off for a final showdown with the villainous Gary North (Fergus O'Donnell), but her plans to see him jailed go horribly wrong, devastating her friends and family in the village.

It's the finale of a plot that has seen the terminally-ill police officer go off the rails in a bid to secure her young daughter's future .

Verity, who first appeared on screen in 1998, left Emmerdale in 2009 before rejoining the cast earlier this year.

She has also appeared on stage and made her West End debut in the musical Hairspray.

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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.