EastEnders star, 70, finds love at funeral and declares she’s a ‘cougar’
Former EastEnders star Debbie Arnold, who played April Branning in the BBC soap, has revealed she's found love again at 70 and met the man in a rather unlikely setting
Debbie Arnold has found love again at 70(Image: Debbie Arnold/Instagram)
EastEnders star Debbie Arnold has announced she’s found love again at the age of 70. The actress has branded herself a “cougar” as the lucky man is nine years her junior.
Debbie played April Branning in the hit BBC soap between 1995 and 1996 – she’s also appeared Corrie and Emmerdale. She’s now revealed she managed to find her new man six months ago – at a funeral of all places.
She appeared on Vanessa Feltz’s Channel 5 show and joked she was a “cougar”. She said: “I met this man and it was like boom, it was just unbelievable.”
The soap star told Vanessa Feltz that she met the man at a funeral – and joked she is a “cougar”(Image: Channel 5)
Asked where they met, she continued: “At a funeral. I didn’t go to a funeral to pull anyone. It was actually at the wake of this funeral and I was sitting beside this man and I thought ‘he’s really nice‘.
“I didn’t think ‘oh wow’. Apparently I put my hand on his knee and said you’re too old for me at one point. We were just chatting, had a really nice time.
“We had a mutual friend and I said ‘is he single?’ and they said ‘yeah I think so’ and I said ‘if he is, then ask him to call me’. And they did a bit of snooping around and then he said ‘why does she want me to call?’ He didn’t get onto it at all.”
Debbie played April Branning in EastEnders(Image: BBC)
Vanessa asked if she’d gotten rusty with flirting, to which Debbie replied: “I wasn’t flirting with him because I didn’t know if he was attached,” adding: “When I started to talk to him, it was quite serious and quite funny, he was just really lovely.
“My friend sounded him out and he rang me and we met for a dog walk and he kissed me when I got out of my car and it was like ‘oh my goodness, I’m in big trouble here’. I could just tell from the first second.”
The soap star admitted the man wasn’t her usual type and that he wouldn’t have normally gone for her either. However, sparks simply flew between them when they met up.
She also played Sylvia Hicks in rival soap Coronation Street(Image: Granada Television)
She explained: “First of all he hasn’t got any hair and I don’t like men with no hair or I thought I didn’t. So I would have definitely have swiped left. And he definitely wouldn’t have gone for me because I’m too old by six or seven years older.
“But we don’t go around with our age over our head. That’s why these dating apps are so ridiculous because they say you’re this age, you’re that age. But really, if you find someone attractive, you don’t care how old they are.”
Debbie used to me married to late actor John Challis, who played Boycie in Only Fools and Horses. She was later married to theatre director David Janson from 1989 untol 2002.
