Archive May 13, 2025

Sue Cleaver has played Coronation Street’s feisty Eileen Grimshaw for 25 years, but as her time on the cobbles comes to an end she reveals what’s in store for the much-loved character, and it’s probably not what you think

Playing feisty Eileen Grimshaw for 25 years means that actress Sue Cleaver loves her as much as Corrie fans. Despite leaving the cobbles in the next few weeks, Sue, 61, wants nothing but the best for Streetcars switchboard operator Eileen.

So, when soap bosses asked her if she wanted a happy ending for the mum of brothers Jason and Todd, the answer was a resounding yes. What they didn’t know was that she had been considering a new life chapter for four years and had already secretly designed her character’s departure.

Sue tells The Mirror: “There was always the risk that they might have killed me off, but they were supportive and said ‘Eileen’s a big part of the show.’ They asked what kind of ending I wanted, and I said I didn’t want to call it a day, because I love the place. I said I wanted a happy ending. Basically, the journey Eileen is taking is pretty much what I’m choosing to do.

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“It’s new adventures. Just because you’re a certain age doesn’t mean that you have to stop, that your chances in life are finished, that you’re stuck and that you’re heading to your ageing days. There’s still a lot of life left in women my age, and we just need to grasp it and get out there and challenge ourselves and get out of our comfort zones. So, the story, in a sense, is following my own departure.”

Revealing that she has been considering leaving for four years, Sue says that last year she contacted former Coronation Street star Ryan Thomas, who spent 16 years playing her screen son Jason. Ryan left the show in 2016 and, in 2021, announced his retirement from acting. But the two have remained good friends, and he agreed to come back after the personal plea from Sue.

“I asked Ryan to come back over a year ago,” she reveals. “He had no intention of coming back into Corrie, but last April I said ‘look Ryan, I need you to do me a favour. I’ve not told work yet, but I’m going to leave and I’d really like you to come back and take me out.’ And bless him, he said: ‘well I can’t refuse that can I?’ “It was really special and lovely. I felt very supported having him there with me on that final day. We’ve both got busy lives, but we’ve always stayed in touch. I’m very fond of him.”

To Eileen’s delight, Jason turns up out of the blue from his home in Thailand at the funeral of her sister Julie Carp (Katy Cavanagh) later this month. With Eileen growing increasingly disenchanted with her life in Weatherfield, she makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to go back with him. Sue says: “I’m at a stage where I thought it was important to forge a new path for myself. My responsibilities as a parent had ended, and it was the right time for a change.

“It had been in my mind for the last four years to leave, so there’s been a lot of preparation and planning and thinking about it and making sure, but it definitely feels right. It’s exciting times. I’m not scared about the future. The only scary thing was making the decision that it was time. But once I’d made the decision, I knew it was the right thing for me.”

Straight-talking Eileen made an immediate impact when she joined the local taxi firm in 2000. “She was cocky, but she had a very big heart,” Sue says. “She was every woman. Everybody knows an Eileen. Everybody has an Eileen living on their street, and I think a lot of women could relate to her. She brought her boys up single-handedly, she’d been treated badly by men, she was a worrier, she was independent.”

The much-loved character has clocked up a string of failed relationships, including Jesse Chadwick, who ended up with her arch enemy Gail Platt and serial killer Pat Phelan. Most recently, she has been dating undertaker George Shuttleworth. When her terminally ill sister Julie took her own life, Eileen was horrified when she was suspected of having a hand in it. This adds to her increasing dissatisfaction with George, triggering her move to pastures new. Sue says: “With Julie passing, she starts to ask herself, ‘Why am I here? I don’t have to be here. Everyone has grown up; everyone has got their own life. This is my time.’”

Sue, who starred in Dinnerladies and Band of Gold before joining Coronation Street, lives in Manchester with her husband, TV lighting technician Brian Owen. Her son Elliot, 29, lives nearby. In the past few years, she has taken time away from the cobbles to appear in I’m a Celebrity and a tour of the musical Sister Act. She is also an occasional panellist on Loose Women and recently wrote her memoir A Work in Progress.

She hasn’t decided what she will do next, but wouldn’t rule out following her co-star Jack P Shepherd into Celebrity Big Brother. “I just don’t know,” she muses. “I’m open. If it sounded fun, I’d say yes, but if it doesn’t, I’m not going to do it. Strictly looks too much like hard work for me – I’ve got the elegance of an elephant – so I couldn’t see myself doing that at the moment.

“But I have no goal. I have no plan. I might go back to school, I’d like to travel more, and I’m having talks about various projects in the future, but I’m only going to be doing things that I really fancy. At this stage in my life, I wanna have fun and a bit of freedom.” While Sue didn’t want big leaving do she says: “Everyone was saying to me ‘are you going to have a party?’ I’m like ‘oh my God, I’m 61, I can’t be doing with parties.’

“And then Antony Cotton said he would ‘sort something.’ He booked a private dining room at the Ivy just for the people that I worked directly with – the Grimshaws and the Street Cars boys. And it was fabulous.” After Sue filmed her final scenes, she was presented with flowers, plus, randomly, an elephant statue from the Grimshaw set. She explains: “When I first moved into the Grimshaws’ house, there was this big elephant ornament. I hated it. I used to say ‘oh my God, it’s disgusting, can somebody just accidentally drop it.’

“Then, as time went on, it became ‘be careful with that elephant, don’t knock the elephant over.’ I got really attached to it and when I was leaving, I said ‘make sure nothing happens to it when I’m not here.’ “On the last day, when they gave me my flowers and presents, suddenly a ribbon-bedecked elephant arrived. I’m its custodian. So, if Eileen ever comes back, the elephant will come back with her!”

Eileen’s fieriest moments:

Eileen Grimshaw doesn’t take prisoners, and, as well as her famous spats with her arch-enemy Gail Platt, countless other Coronation Street residents have been on the receiving end of her fiery temper. “I’m told there have been 19 slaps, most of them were for her son Jason, and there were a few punches,” says Sue. “I can’t even remember them all – how horrifying is that, that’s it has become the norm!

“I remember Eileen once hit Steve McDonald, and I nearly knocked (the actor) Simon Gregson out. This was in the days before health and safety. They didn’t get a stunt person in. They just said ‘slap him’. So, I slapped him and he was literally seeing stars. There was another scene with Simon and Craig Charles, where I had to bang their heads together. I got it a bit wrong and actually did it, and it was really hard. I felt awful – you could just hear this loud crack – the sound was terrible!”

Eileen has also punched Janice Battersby, slapped Pat Phelan and ended up in hospital herself back in 2012, when she was accidentally smacked in the face during a fight scene with Lesley Kershaw, played by Judy Holt. Sue hit the floor and lost consciousness. “I was knocked out cold,” she recalls. “They still used the sound and sent me to hospital!”

A Work In Progress by Sue Cleaver is out now in paperback by Bloomsbury Publishing

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Kim Kardashian stars as a ruthless divorce lawyer in the upcoming legal drama All’s Fair, which is created by Ryan Murphy, and will be airing later this year on Hulu

Kim Kardashian is taking on the role of a formidable divorce lawyer in an all-female law firm alongside Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts and others in the first trailer for Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming legal drama, All’s Fair.

The trailer, released on Tuesday, showcases the reality star turned actress and her co-lawyers assisting women in divorcing their unfaithful husbands, stopping at nothing to achieve their clients’ objectives. “You know what a woman’s best friend is? Not diamonds. Her lawyers,” proclaims Judith Light.

Kardashian portrays Allura Grant, the proprietor of the law firm. “Fierce, brilliant, and emotionally complicated, they navigate high-stakes breakups, scandalous secrets, and shifting allegiances- both in the courtroom and within their own ranks. In a world where money talks and love is a battleground, these women don’t just play the game-they change it,” reads the show’s synopsis.

The cast is further bolstered by Teyana Taylor, Matthew Noszka, Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close. The series is set to make its debut on Hulu.

This comes as the mum-of-four, 44, is in the French capital, testifying, after she was held at gunpoint in 2016 during Paris Fashion Week by a gang of masked men dubbed the ‘Grandpa robbers’ by the French media due to their age.

Sobbing, the SKIMS star told a Paris court on Tuesday she thought she would be raped by the men, whose ages range from 38 to 78, saying: “I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me I absolutely did think I was going to die.”

Kim arrived at the Palais De Justice in Paris for the trial today, where she will testify over the horrifying 2016 robbery that saw her being held at gunpoint by masked men dressed as police officers as millions of dollars worth of jewellery was stolen. A group of pensioners dubbed the ‘grandpa robbers’ by French media are on trial in Paris, charged with stealing the star’s jewellery during Paris Fashion Week in 2016.

The last time Kim saw the masked men that police say robbed her, she was bound at gunpoint and left locked in a marble bathroom while the gang stole jewellery, including Kim’s engagement ring from her ex-husband, Kanye West, worth millions of dollars.

Admitting she was surprised by the men’s ages, saying she thought they were younger, Kim told the court, “I thought they were younger. It was the way he carried me. I’m not saying that older people cannot carry, but I was just surprised when I saw the photos of them.”

A court was told on Monday that the reality star was in a state of “serious terror” when the armed robbers burst into her hotel room nine years ago.

Hotel receptionist, Abderrahmane Ouatiki, 48, who was handcuffed and forced at gunpoint to lead two armed robbers to Kim’s hotel room, told the court: “She was terrified, in a state of hysteria.”

Ouatiki told the court that Kim began screaming that she was a mother when the gunmen burst into her bedroom. He said: “She was in serious terror; it was unbearable to see a woman in that type of distress.”

The robbers took Ouatiki at gunpoint in the lift with them to Kim’s apartment, he told the court. As they approached her bedroom, Ouatiki said Kardashian called out “Hello? Hello?” thinking it might be her older sister Kourtney Kardashian returning from a nightclub. He said the robbers burst into the room and roughly pushed Kim.

Ouatiki said The Kardashians star was shouting and hysterical. Concerned the lead robber was “very nervous, unstable, aggressive”, Ouatiki added that he felt he had to “calm things down and contain it” so he shouted at Kim to “shut up!”.

He said the robbers were asking in French for money. Ouatiki, still with a gun held at his head, tried to translate. Kim said she had “a thousand” – either in dollars or euros. He said she gave the robbers the ring that was on a bedside table. She then nodded towards a Louis Vuitton jewellery box, the robbers allegedly opened it and tipped its valuable contents into two bags.

The ten suspects, who are aged between 35 and 78, are on trial on May 23. Some are accused of aiding in the organisation of the robbery. Eight of the accused deny any involvement in the terrifying robbery.

The suspects include Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, and the alleged ringleader, who has publicly admitted kidnapping and robbing Ms Kardashian. Another suspect who confessed is named Yunnis Abbas, 72, who wrote a book about the robbery called I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian.

The trial continues.