Emmerdale favourite Jeff Hordley, 50, couldn’t resist boasting about his homegrown runner beans during a funny interview with Janet Street-Porter, 73, on Loose Women this week. The actor impressively revealed he has become green-fingered and has been focusing on growing his own vegetables while having some time off from the ITV soap due to the coronavirus lockdown.
The Cain Dingle star explained that although he has lost some of his plants to pests, his runner beans are still going strong.
However, Jeff’s revelation proved to be “annoying” for Janet after the competitive soap star bragged about getting “one-up” on her with his vegetable growing results.
The presenter quizzed the actor on the subject, asking: “You’ve been boasting a bit about your allotment and obviously lockdown, when you weren’t acting, you’ve had plenty of time to get on your allotment and I have taken to walking past people’s allotments and just seeing what progress they’re making and it’s always heartbreaking when you go past a really good allotment.
“I want to weep, I’ve planted my runner beans twice and each time they get to a certain height and then something’s eating them, have you had the same trouble?”
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Although Jeff could empathise with Janet on some of the issue, he insisted his runner beans have remained safe.
The star divulged: “Yes, we’ve lost courgettes due to the frosts because there was some frosts in May.
“But my ruling with vegetables is two for me and one for nature, be it a bird or be it the weather.
“Mice are pests and pigeons are pests and we’ve lost some courgettes but our runner beans have been fine so I’m one up there on you, Janet.”
Janet seemed less than impressed with Jeff’s comments, as she hit back: “Oh god, that is so annoying, I can’t tell you.
“My runner beans are like Fort Knox, I have got wire around them, I’ve got netting around them and I’ve never had to do it before and I swear it’s really tiny mice so would you put down mice traps or would you be a Buddhist and say, ‘Let it go?’”
Giving his advice on the matter, Jeff replied: “I’d say let it go but if they’re really pesky you can get… because where we live we get mice in our house and we have humane little mouse traps and often we get these little mice and sometimes they’re so cute we want to keep them.
“But obviously we’re not going to do that so we release them back into the wild so I would be more on the Buddhist kind of side.”
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Elsewhere, Danny Miller, who plays the character of Aaron Dingle in Emmerdale, has opened up about scenes he found “difficult” to film with Jeff when the pair returned to set with lockdown restrictions.
Speaking to Lorraine Kelly on Good Morning Britain about navigating social distancing rules, the actor explained: “The distance obviously is different.
“We’re having to abide by rules and stay two metres apart.”
He went on to discuss: “Believe it or not, it’s a lot more difficult for us to just do the everyday work because on top of that we’re in charge of cleaning and looking after our own props.
“You don’t realise how close you get to the director when you show them your scripts and suddenly you’re there.”
Danny, who joined the Emmerdale cast in 2008, continued to explain how people were there to ensure he and Jeff didn’t accidentally get too close.
The ITV star added: “So there were people who were put in place to kind of be there and ensure that we didn’t get carried away and suddenly get face to face.
“It was difficult, a lot different obviously.”
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV.