'IT'S THERAPY ON ANOTHER LEVEL'

Hollyoaks actress Jennifer Metcalfe opens up on how the emotional storyline of her character Mercedes going through bowel cancer is helping her deal with losing her father to the same cruel disease

- ALICE PENWILL

In the 18 years Jennifer Metcalfe has been in Hollyoaks, there isn't I much that her feisty character Mercedes McQueen hasn't been through from the tragic deaths of her many husbands, to a psychopathic son and the devastating still birth of Gabriel.

However, the matriarch of the McQueen family is about to face her biggest challenge yet, and as a result, so is Jennifer.

With the show jumping forward by a year, it was revealed that Mercedes had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, a disease that has affected Jennifer in real life too.

"I have been struggling emotionally," admits Jennifer, 41. "My dad died when I was 15 from bowel cancer, so it's very personal to me. I've not dealt with my dad's death for the last 25 years. So I'm a woman grieving for herself, for the character, for the story and for everyone that's going through it. This storyline is therapy on another level."

Jennifer explains that her dad, Colin, was diagnosed and passed away in the space of a year.

"He had chemotherapy, but that cancer had spread," she says. "Once he was on the operating table, there was nothing they could do for him. He went into a hospice, and I was by his side when he died, begging him to die because he was going through so much pain."