Emmerdale’s reigning Queen of mean, Kim Tate, seems pretty indestructible, right? Having ruled the Yorkshire Dales with an iron fist across two reigns.

While she’s definitely displayed many more human qualities in recent years, with her relationship with unlikely bestie Lydia Dingle (Karen Blick) and maternal bonds with Dawn Taylor (Olivia Bromley), Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) and actual son Jamie Tate (Alexander Lincoln), make no mistake about it – Kim is still the kind of enemy nightmares are made of and you should cross her only with extreme caution.

Claire King, the legendary face behind the boss-of-the-big-house, though, is much more willing to be vulnerable.

‘You start noticing the 5am starts five days a week and learning lines every weekend,’ Claire told Woman’s Weekly, when asked about how long she plans to continue acting.

‘That’s not ideal really when you’re getting older. And it doesn’t help that I have arthritis because the medication slows the brain down

‘I’ll never fully retire, but I might retire from Emmerdale because I do get a lot of exposure and the brain is getting slower now that I’m in my mid-60s.’

While we don’t want to imagine an Emmerdale without Kim’s icy one-liners, her ability to manipulate anyone and anything and her incredibly wealthy but totally messed up family, it seems that Claire is putting her health forward, as she should.

Claire came up with a few alternatives for when the time comes ‘to slow down a bit’, and with a reference to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, she posited: ‘I could sit in a little wheelchair with a car rug over my knees and just explain what’s happening in the show!’

As a Rocky Horror fan, Kim Tate as the narrator is a tantalising idea!

Kim’s recently found herself in the wicked web of DS Thea Ramsden (Chelsea Edge), who’s beef with her was initially unexplained.

Through the magic of flashbacks, though, we learned something that Kim had yet to tell us – either due to her dedication to keeping the secret, or more likely a spot of creative retconning from the powers that be over in the Dales.

Kim’d previously given birth to a daughter and had her adopted, and that baby had grown up into incredibly vengeful copper, Thea.

‘The audience gets to know about it before Kim does, so it will be quite a good surprise for them to see Kim’s reaction as well, which actually we haven’t even filmed yet.

‘So, there’s quite a long way to go before we get to the reaction, because of certain storylines with the baby and everything.

‘There are a lot of ins and outs and ups and downs on the route to that.’

Explaining the moment she was called up to the producer’s office for a meeting, Claire said: ‘If you’re asked to go upstairs, you get a bit twitchy sometimes, because you think, ‘Oh God, it’s me next. Out the door!’

‘Anyway, they said, ‘No, we want to talk about future storylines. Kim’s got a daughter,’ and I was like, ‘What? Okay…’ It surprised me that she had a daughter! I didn’t know that. I don’t think anybody knew that! That surprised me.

The question on all of our lips, though? Who’s the daddy?!

‘I was thinking, ‘Okay, so it could be so-and-so’s, and it could be so-and-so’s,’ because it was just after I’d left the first time, so we’re talking about the turn of the century because she’s about 26.

‘It was just after Kim left in the helicopter, so you’ve got to put two and two together and see who you come up with.’

Ugh, fine. We’ll just have to wait and see!


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