BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea

TM: Jason Manford says daughters asked him to TV script

Jason Manford has comically shared his daughters' mortified response to his new role on Waterloo Road.

The 43 year old comedian has joined the 14th series of the show as the head teacher Steve Savage. During an appearance on This Morning on Wednesday, Jason discussed the BBC drama and his character.

He disclosed his kids' thoughts on him portraying head teacher Steve in Waterloo Road, saying: "My kids said: 'Aw, you'll be good at that dad.' I sent them the page actually, I said: 'What do you think about this?' Not the full story because I don't want to ruin it for them.

"I said: 'One of your favourite shows, they've asked me to play the head teacher!' My daughters had a funny reaction, I told them roughly the storyline and at that point they [producers] said to me: 'He's going to have a will-they-won't-they with one of the teachers' and I said that to the girls.

"They went: 'Urgh!' and I said: 'What do you mean? That's just part of the storyline, it's not me, it's just the character' and they went: 'Yeah, but that teacher she's about 24 and you're 43 you weirdo!'", reports the Mirror.

Jason Manford appeared on Wednesday's episode on This Morning (Image: Shutterstock/ITV)

"So I thought alright, fine, so I had to get back in touch with the producers to go: 'I will do it but can you change the love interest to somebody more age appropriate.' And it was Kym Marsh [who plays Nicky Walters], which wasn't difficult!"

This Morning's Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley then quizzed him on whether his daughters received a writing credit for their contribution to the show.

It comes as Saira Choudhry, 42, has joined the cast of the school-based BBC One drama as teacher Nisha Chandra and enlisted the help of a friend to understand her scripts because she "scraped" a pass in her GCSE Maths and couldn't get her head around some of her lines that were based around numbers.

Jason Manford has joined Waterloo Road as head teacher Steve Savage (Image: BBC/NYNEX/Wall To Wall/Warner Brothers TV Production Services Ltd/Matt Burlem) SUBSCRIBE Invalid email

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She is quoted by the Daily Star newspaper as saying: "I scraped a C in maths. I'm not the best at maths at all. I have a friend, Sam, and he is a part-time maths tutor. So when I first joined 'Waterloo Road' and I had these massive monologues, I would be like, 'Sam, help me, what does this mean?'

"He would send me maths videos and draw all these triangles. He's been really useful." The former Coronation Street star also used YouTube videos to make sure she was pronouncing complicated terminology correctly and is thrilled with her latest role because she has been a fan for such a long time.

This Morning continues on weekdays at 10am on ITV and ITV X.

BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea

BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea

BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea

BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea

BBC show makes last minute U-turn after actor's daughters issued plea