Emmerdale actor Chris Coghill has found a fittingly Kev Barton-style solution to his lengthy commute: he has bought a caravan to live in while filming.
Coghill lives in Hertfordshire, around a three-hour drive from the Emmerdale set, making for a long round trip to work. To cut down on time spent driving, he has invested in a caravan, a move that has drawn comparisons to his on-screen alter ego.
Caravan purchase revealed
A video posted to the MTL Caravans and Motorhomes Facebook page showed Coghill with a sales representative and his new vehicle. 'Delivering this to Chris so he has somewhere to stay while filming Emmerdale,' said the MTL representative. 'This is gonna be the home of Kevin Barton in the Yorkshire Dales,' Coghill confirmed, admiring his new motorhome.
Speaking to The Sun at the Inside Soap Awards recently, Coghill said: 'I'm driving up and down the A1 like a maniac. I live in Hertfordshire. I go home at the weekends. I've just put a caravan in Leeds. I bring it down with me.'
Permanent return to the Dales
While Coghill's previous stint as Kev was finite, appearing for a limited time as part of Aaron Dingle (Danny Miller) and Robert Sugden's (Ryan Hawley) Robron reunion storyline, his current run is as a permanent, full-time cast member, prompting him to trim the time spent on the A1.
Coghill recently spoke about the surprising initial reaction to Kev, and how taken aback he was at how popular his alter-ego quickly became, while also arguing that he had his reasons for behaving so badly.
'When I was originally coming into it the first time round, they were like, 'Kev's this horrible manipulator who's forced Robert to marry him in prison, he's coming out and he's going to die from a heart problem.' And then I said, 'I'm not going to do it if he dies.' So they said, 'Alright, he's not going to die, he pretends he's going to die.'
'There's a lot going on that people pick up on on social media. There's people going, 'Kev's really funny!' and other people going, 'Yeah, but what about the time he stabbed himself in prison to emotionally blackmail Robert?'
Defending Kev
Coghill went on to argue that, while Kev's antics were villainous, Robert was hardly an angel in their relationship. 'Robert's an absolute lying piece of… Nothing that came out of his mouth the entire time Kev was with Robert was true!'
'I always knew the timescale that first bit was going to play out over, but as we did it and, to an extent, the way I was doing it, it was like, 'Oh… The writing's slightly different.'
'It became a bit funnier and more endearing. He had a bit more of a vulnerable side. There's scenes where he can go from being a psycho, to vulnerable to quite slapstick and hapless, then back to being scary again, all in one scene, which is quite unusual to do.'
Explaining what led to his return, Coghill said: 'When I left the first time, they said, 'This wasn't what we intended to happen,' and then they asked me to come back within about five weeks.
'This time, now I've come back, there's a lot more of the sympathetic side coming out. I'm doing that but I'm still switching every now and then. It's like a playground, isn't it? You can do everything all at once, and they let me! I start messing about with bits in scenes. I'm really liking it.'
