Pauline Quirke: 'Suzanne showed me the ropes'

Pauline Quirke has revealed that pal Suzanne Shaw showed her the ropes when she joined Emmerdale. The Birds Of A Feather star has joined the show as Hazel Walsh, the free-spirited mum of Aaron Livesy's love interest Jackson. She told TV Times: "Suzanne and I sat down with her schedule and mine, and she showed me how she worked it all out. It's a bit of a skill." She went on: "There are four directors doing 14 episodes and you have to work out who you're with." Both Pauline and Suzanne live in the Buckinghamshire village of Penn and their families have become good friends. And Suzanne admits that when she first joined the cast as man-eating Eve Jenson, she turned to Pauline for advice. The former Hear'Say star said: "She took me through my scripts and gave me a few acting lessons. Now it's just great to have her on board." 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.