It's also be announced that a former Hollyoaks star is joining the BBC1 soap...
Lorna Laidlaw, who plays Mrs Tembe in Doctors, is to bow out of the soap after eight years in the role.
Practice Manager Mrs Tembe, who started out as The Mill’s receptionist, will wave goodbye to Letherbridge next month. And it will be a happy ending for the fan favourite - the character will start a new life with the Reverend Gordon Clement when he is offered a job in a new parish and she also secures a post. The pair have recently re-united, following a brief relationship back in 2013.
Doctors bosses have also announced that Ali Bastian, best known for playing teacher Becca Dean in Hollyoaks and PC Sally Armstrong in The Bill, will join the soap to play Mrs Tembe’s replacement, Becky Clarke, a friend of Mrs T's from her Women in Business group. The character's boyfriend Tam, will subsequently arrive in Letherbridge from Scotland.
Proud Christian Mrs Tembe – who refuses to be called by her first name, Winifred – made her first appearance on the soap back in January 2011. Her first major storyline saw her become the victim of racist bullying by neighbour Trevor Waterhouse, a single dad who had become brainwashed by a far right group and blamed Mrs T for his unemployment and failings as a father.
Subsequent storylines included the shock arrival of her husband Thomas in 2013. Mrs Tembe had previously led her colleagues to believe that he was dead, but admitted that he was gay and that she had outed him to their Botswanian village – which resulted in her being shunned by the locals and led to her decision to emigrate to the UK.
News of Mrs Tembe’s impending departure comes just comes two months after the soap bid farewell to another iconic character. Medic Heston Carter, played by Owen Brenman, was killed off in a car crash caused by colleague Al Haskey, after notching up ten years at The Mill.
Doctors continues on BBC1.
