Charlie Hardwick tells Steve Pratt that she is ready for a marriage made in hell for TV soap Emmerdale...

and even designed her own dress. WHEN the parents of Geordie actress Charlie Hardwick saw their daughter get married, it wasn't quite what they expected for her big day.

She was kidnapped, bound and gagged, a bag put over her head, and held for ransom in a barn. Not that she knows it's her wedding day to begin with as bridegroom Eric Pollard, played by Chris Chittell, has planned a secret wedding on the cheap, tying it in with the village pub of the year celebrations organised by the bride herself.

She's unaware she's been arranging her own wedding reception too.

It can only be happening in a soap, as Emmerdale marks its 5,000th episode with the wedding - or not - of dodgy businessman Pollard and the Woolpack's lively landlady Val Lambert.

This is a marriage made not so much in heaven as hell, considering all the trials and tribulations - and arguments - the bickering couple have been having in the run-up to the ceremony.

Charlie Hardwick, a well-known figure treading the boards in Newcastle before joining the ITV1 Yorkshire-set soap, plays Val and has established her as one of the series' best loved characters in the five years she's been there.

And now she's getting married and her parents are in the background as extras in the hour-long episode. Not quite the wedding they'd hoped for their daughter perhaps.

She came up with the design for her wedding dress with the show's head of costume, Janet Powell. "I designed my own dress, which is a dream as I've never bought me own wedding dress. What a tragedy,"

says Hardwick.

"We got a woman in to make it. It's georgette and taffeta with a little bolero that covers the older woman's arms and helps with the cold because the wind really blows down the main street.

"I love 1940s clothing and my mum was a dressmaker. She was a young woman in that period so I know about the style. The dress is a bit of an homage to my mum and of the era I love. A sort of 1940s/1950s Christian Dior."

The dress has a very full skirt, which she thought would enhance the comedy when the happy couple fly off in a helicopter. "I wanted plenty of skirt so Eric had to stuff me in like a big blancmange," she says.

Part of her other wedding day "costume"

is a brown bag - put over her head by her kidnappers. She reports it was lined with nice soft cotton and had a hole in the back, which viewers won't see, to ensure she didn't suffer too much.

She joined the Emmerdale cast after many appearances with Live Theatre in Newcastle, including Lee Hall's Cooking With Elvis. Hardwick would love to get back on stage but, apart from play readings at Live, hasn't been able to fit in any theatre work around the six-days-a-week Emmerdale schedule.

Her last theatre role was in a play, Breaking Waves, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. "It was about a mother whose family is on the lifeboats and was fantastic. I'd love to do something on stage and the bosses at Emmerdale are so supportive. I did a radio play, Waiting Room by Julia Darling, and they were fantastic about working around it. Normally you can't do anything else because the schedule is so tight, but it was something close to my heart. I hope I get the opportunity to do theatre at some point in the future. Perhaps Val could be sent off to Costa Rica for six weeks."

She can't believe it's five years since she joined the Emmerdale cast. "I've never known anything go so quickly, I really can't believe it. I was young when I came into this," she jokes.

She's had to adjust to a different way of working to the theatre. Filming is relentless with little or no time for rehearsal. "It's a different skill," she says of TV soap acting.

"You more or less go on set and have to do it immediately. We get the scripts probably about a fortnight before filming. I read the script the day before that particular block starts filming. I treat it a bit like life and just see what happens."

"I think a lot of experienced actors get the shock of their life when they start in a series like this. It's unlike anything else, but if you're a creative person you'll find space to create."

She and the rest of the cast sat with journalists watching the wedding episode.

She likes to see every episode "because I am super-critical".

Her flat in London is rented out as she lives in Leeds during the week when she's filming Emmerdale. Then at weekends she heads for Newcastle.

"It's a bit like being on the rigs, you have to dedicate yourself to the job. Then on Saturday I go to Newcastle to see my friends, do cramming sessions. I'm a season ticket holder at Newcastle, so I go to the match, meet friends and have a curry. Then to my mum's for Sunday dinner. I'm never as relaxed as when I get into that house."

Then it's back to Emmerdale and married life - and what will surely be a lively and stormy union. "When the producer said we were going to marry, my heart sank because I thought they were going to be sanitised, but she said they'll still be able to have affairs and do dastardly things," says Hardwick.

* Emmerdale continues on ITV1, 7pm, Monday to Friday. The 5,000th episode is tomorrow and the hour-long wedding episode on Tuesday, 7pm.