Sue Johnston feels "sad" she will never film ‘The Royle Family’ again.
The actress admits it is a "poignant" time of the year after losing her co-star Caroline Aherne, who passed away in 2016 aged 52, and while she finds it hard to watch repeats of the programme, she looks back on those days of shooting the sitcom alongside Ricky Tomlinson and Craig Cash as times of hilarity.
She said: "It was very much like a family. When they changed the lights around from scene to scene we never left the sofa. We just used to sit around and talk and laugh.
"We were all very fond of each other. I miss it.
"There’s a sadness that we’ll never do that again.
"Especially at Christmas it was very poignant because Caroline’s birthday was on Christmas Day.
"So it’s all very poignant."
Despite admitting she finds it "very hard" to watch ‘The Royle Family’ nowadays, she did happen to turn onto one of the Christmas specials recently.
Speaking on ‘This Morning’, she added: "The other night I couldn’t sleep, so I put the telly on and there was a Christmas special on.
"I’ve found it very hard to watch it since Caroline died, but there it was.
"The frozen turkey with Craig Cash in the bath. Bizarre."
And ‘This Morning’ co-host Eamonn Holmes also remembers Caroline fondly from when she used to be his secretary, and he recalled she always harboured dreams of writing TV shows when she was doing the job.
He said: "I worked at the BBC and Caroline Aherne was the presenters’ secretary at the BBC.
"She used to talk about how she wanted to go and write things, and we all looked at her and went, ‘Yes, that would be good.’
"And what a genius. Genius is not too strong a term."
Sue Johnston feels ‘sad’ she’ll never do The Royle Family again
