Watch top soap stars play football for charity

Soap stars from Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and Emmerdale have joined forces to play football for charity - and they may be playing near you! Emmerdale's Danny Miller and Kelvin Fletcher, Hollyoaks' Anthony Quinlan and ex Corrie star Danny Young are part of M1 Charity FC, sponsored by Soaplife magazine, and are playing charity games to help raise money for Shannon Bradshaw Trust, a UK charity helping children with life-threatening conditions. M1 Charity FC is aided by a raft of ex-professional footballers, including the former Valencia, Lazio and Middlesbrough midfielder maestro Gaizka Mendieta. The team will travel around the country and play in a number of fixtures throughout a season which kicks off in May and ends in September, including a high-profile showdown against Derby County and Premiership Legends at Pride Park on Thursday, May 19. You can find out if M1 Charity FC is playing near you at www.charityfootball.co.uk. Meanwhile, play the video to see how good (or not!) the soap stars are at football:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj5DanR8ZE4

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.