Hello! And Goodbye To Lucy

‘YOU would have thought that madcap Kinvara and just-plain-nice (and there’s nothing wrong with being nice) Ben would have made it onto the cover of this week’s magazine.

Lucy manages to rein in her emotions

But you’d have been wrong. These days, one obscure soap star with no breeding whatsoever can trump generations of the Fitzalan-Howards – and it is Lucy Benjamin, EastEnders’ Lisa, who occupies the prime spot.

Except she is no longer EastEnders’ Lisa because she has been sacked – and what better way to cope with the trauma of being given the boot than to pour your heart out to Hello! In fact, Lucy has been carrying this round as a secret for the past two months, but the sight of Hello!’s proffered cheque book was enough to persuade her to unburden herself.

”It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” she says. ”I just sat there just trying to concentrate on not crying. I could feel my chin wobbling a bit and I sat there thinking to myself, ‘This is just a job, be brave, it’s fine, take it on the chin’.” But her chin was wobbling so much, this proved easier said than done and she ended up sobbing in the arms of on-screen boyfriend Steve McFadden.

But all is not lost – once a year, there is always pantomime and Lucy (one of the country’s most talented actresses) has already signed up to play Cinderella in Tunbridge Wells (book early to avoid disappointment). And, as her brother Ben said when Lucy told him she was leaving the BBC soap, ”Thank God for that, you might get sane now”.

The world really doesn’t have room for all these mad, mad people.

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Posted: 4th, September 2002 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink