Caroline Aherne sends support to Geoffrey Hughes

Royle Family star Caroline Aherne has sent a get well message to cancer-stricken actor Geoffrey Hughes. Caroline - who starred with the Geoffrey in the BBC sitcom - said: "Geoffrey is a fighter. He has beaten this cancer before and I know he will beat it again." Geoffrey, 66, who played binman Eddie Yeats in Coronation Street before appearing as Twiggy in The Royle Family, is having radiotherapy after his prostate cancer returned. Caroline, 46, added: "I am thinking about Geoffrey at this very difficult time. "He is a warm and talented man and we are all looking forward to working with him again on the Royle Family Christmas Special." Geoffrey thought he had beaten the disease last year but was rushed to hospital at the weekend after his wife Sue found him collapsed with back pain at their Isle of Wight home. A spokeswoman for the star said last night: "Geoffrey is feeling much better. He's hoping to be out of hospital at the end of the week."

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.