‘Excrutiating’ Emmerdale Christmas scene that Chris Coghill is refusing to do

There’s so much to love about Kev Townsend, isn’t there? While actor Chris Coghill probably agrees as far as most points go, one thing he’s not a fan of is his character’s musical numbers that’ve been lighting up Emmerdale since his arrival.

Daniel Bedingfield, Boyzone, and the Spice Girls are a few of the notable pop acts that our Kev has covered since arriving in the Yorkshire Dales last year and, honestly, we want more.

Despite our deep pleasure whenever Kev warms up his vocal chords and begins serenading the audience, though, it turns out Chris, the man behind the loveable loony tune, isn’t as much of a fan as we are.

‘Absolutely not, I hate them,’ he replied when Metro asked if he enjoyed performing his character’s propensity to burst into song at a moments notice.

So, if another turned up in a script, what would he say?

‘No! If I could sing, I wouldn’t have been an actor. If I could sing, I’d have been in a band in the 1990s.’

While he remained pretty firm on the front, he did reveal a bargain he’s working on with Emmerdale boss, Laura Shaw: ‘Laura did say to me the other week, ‘Do you want to do All I Want for Christmas is You?’, and I said, ‘If you keep me until Christmas 2029, I’ll do it then.’

‘We’re in constant negotiations. It’s excruciating. Horrible.’

He also revealed a caveat he had for taking on the role: that Kev wouldn’t die of the ‘terminal’ heart condition that helped him escape prison.

‘When I was originally coming into it the first time round, they were like, ‘Kev’s this horrible manipulator who’s forced Robert [Sugden (Ryan Hawley)] to marry him in prison, he’s coming out and he’s going to die from a heart problem.’

‘And then I said, ‘I’m not going to do it if he dies.’ So they said, ‘Alright, he’s not going to die, he pretends he’s going to die.’

Speaking on his shock at how popular his character has become, Chris said: ‘There’s a lot going on that people pick up on on social media.

‘There’s people going, ‘Kev’s really funny!’ and other people going, ‘Yeah, but what about the time he stabbed himself in prison to emotionally blackmail Robert?’ Robert’s an absolute lying piece of…

Chris went on to defend the discourse that came from Kev’s relationship with Robert.

‘Nothing that came out of [Robert’s] mouth the entire time Kev was with Robert was true! I always knew the timescale that first bit was going to play out over, but as we did it and, to an extent, the way I was doing it, it was like, ‘Oh… The writing’s slightly different.’

Explaining the evolution of Kev in his initial stint, Chris said: ‘It became a bit funnier and more endearing. He had a bit more of a vulnerable side. There’s scenes where he can go from being a psycho, to vulnerable to quite slapstick and hapless, then back to being scary again, all in one scene, which is quite unusual to do.

‘When I left the first time, they said, ‘This wasn’t what we intended to happen,’ and then they asked me to come back within about five weeks. This time, now I’ve come back, there’s a lot more of the sympathetic side coming out.

What’s the reaction from the public been like? Turns out the most common question people have is: ‘Have you got Lemon Drizzle?’

Elaborating, Chris said: ‘I’ve not had that many in-depth conversations with people on the street, but the ones I have had have been people going, ‘Kev!’ And you go, ‘Yeah!’ ‘You’re great!’ ‘Thank you!’ Nobody’s had a go at me.

‘I know this is a different thing, but when I started EastEnders, with the character I was doing in that, they were like, ‘There’s people out there who really can’t tell the difference between what they see on telly and what’s real life, and because of the character you’re playing, you’re going to get a lot of s*** and you might need police protection…’

‘And then you go out and people are like, ‘You’re brilliant in EastEnders, mate.’ Although I did get hit over the head with a handbag in Selfridges, but apart from that…’