Returning Emmerdale star Andrew Scarborough has revealed how the soap kept his return as Graham Foster a secret. The presumed-dead character made a surprise comeback on the recent Corriedale crossover, with a flashback revealing how he managed to fake his death 6 years ago.

And it seems his return won’t be secret for long in the village, as upcoming scenes will see him reveal his return to Kim and Joe Tate following ex Rhona learning he is alive.

Opening up about keeping his comeback a “big secret”, Andrew admitted it had been “tricky” to keep mostly quiet around his family, having told only a “limited few” beforehand.

“In fact I had some cousins who contacted me after it was shown, saying you sod,” he shared, before explaining the lengths the soap went to keep things under wraps.

“I had to come and go through the special entrance, I wore a hood, or a hat, and I probably looked very suspicious actually,” the star revealed. “In all documentation and scripts I was called Bruce.

“It was rather funny as when Laura the producer called me to tell me I was being given a code name I felt very flattered because she said, we’ve got a code name for Graham. It is Bruce Wayne. So I went back to my partner and said, Oh, you know, the code name that they got for me is Bruce Wayne.

“But when I got to the studios on the first day, I saw the name down as Bruce Forsyth. So that was the first wind up from some of my old friends, very funny. Also I was left off the billings so fans couldn’t read ahead that I was back on the cast list.”

Andrew said it was “amazing that it kept quiet”, recalling: “I thought it was going to spill, as I was filming for two months before I was seen on screen in Corriedale and I had known I was coming back for a further 4 months before that as well. So I have had 6 months of secrecy.”

The actor also admitted it was a “complete surprise” that they asked him back in the first place and “never expected it at all”, though felt that “Graham was capable”.

“He was a highly trained SAS operative,” he noted. “And the way I had always played it, was that he had worked for the government. So he was into espionage and a type of ‘fixer’ for the government. So used to smoke and mirrors.”