Ainsdale actress Sophie Abelson on her starring role as nurse Cherry Malone in the daytime soap, Doctors

Sep 30 2009 by Jamie McLoughlin, Formby Times

THERE is a reason one of the boffins at the BBC was ordered to invent the iPlayer – it’s so people with jobs can watch Doctors.

The marvel of catch-up telly at your fingertips means that – in our household at least – the day-to-day lives and loves of staff at The Mill Health Centre in the fictional Midlands town of Letherbridge is the previously undiscovered lunchtime treat that can now be enjoyed while tucking in to your tea.

And if you are one of the 3.5 million viewers who tune in to the nine-year-old soap every day to see minxish Dr Zara Carmichael behaving like the Alexis Colby of outer Birmingham, Dr Heston Carter being verbose in a dickie bow whilst casually quaffing Lapsang souchong or Brummie receptionist Karen Hollins trying to spice up her marriage to a very serious policeman, then you’ll also know all about Cherry Malone.

Ainsdale-born actress Sophie Abelson has been playing the eternally cheerful practice nurse since April, a five-month period which has already seen her fall for a registrar who turned out to be gay, pursued by Letherbridge lothario Dr Daniel Granger and framed by colleague Michelle Corrigan, the actual guilty party, for almost killing a patient with the wrong injection.

But through it all, Nurse Malone keeps on smiling.

“Cherry does sort of live her life in a big pink bubble and she just wants to meet Mr Right, or should I say Mr Perfect, but you’ll know in real life that this just isn’t possible,” Sophie told the Times in a rare break from the grinding filming schedule two-and-a-half hours of daytime drama a week requires.

She continued: “When you’re playing her, you sometimes wish that you could be as good as her, but there is a big storyline coming up and all I can say is, if someone lives in that sort of pink bubble, it has to burst sometime.”

Sophie, quite rightly, remains deeply mysterious and teasing about cheery Cherry’s forthcoming plot whammy but as the sneak preview photographs on this page suggest – the right man may just have stepped out of the shadows for our favourite nurse. Or has he?

The 28-year-old former Greenbank High pupil was, like many a budding performer from our resort, a member of junior performing arts group Merry-Go-Round in the 1990s.

She remembered: “It was more musical theatre than drama and I’ve always been more interested in acting. The biggest role I had with Merry Go Round was Morgana the Witch when they did Robin Hood and I was in Sweeney Todd as well, but usually I was the third tree from the left. Like I said, I’m not very musical!”

Moving into the town centre with her family when she was 16, Sophie then left for Manchester at 18 to study media and drama at university.

Graduating seven years ago, she has spent much of the time between Salford and Letherbridge on the boards including, in 2006, an impressive portrayal of Barbara Windsor in the ‘backstage at the Carry On set’ play Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick at the Bolton Octagon.