Gabrielle Glaister is set to make a dramatic return to Coronation Street, but not as her former character Debs Brownlow on the ITV soap.
Coronation Street fans will instead be seeing double next week when Bernie Winter finds herself face to face with her doppelganger, played by none other than Gabrielle.
It will be a case of double trouble for Bernie when her lookalike Fern tries to rope her into some dodgy antics.
The doppelganger storyline was hatched by Corrie actress Jane Hazlegrove herself, who suggested the idea of Bernie having a double after she and former Corrie star Gabrielle Glaister were constantly mistaken for one another.
Jane mentioned the possible storyline to writer Jonathan Harvey and the doppelganger plot with Bernie and Fern was developed, with Gabrielle cast as Fern.
Jane has revealed that the pair look so similar that some of their Coronation Street colleagues have even stopped Gabrielle in the corridor to chat thinking it was her.
She said: “I mentioned this idea to Jonathan a while ago. Gabby and I are constantly mistaken for each other with people saying they have seen one of us in something when it was the other one.
“We have often laughed about it together but then I started thinking it might be fun to have her in the show as Bernie’s secret twin or a doppelganger.
“I was so chuffed when they told me that they had devised this storyline and that Gabby was on board.”
Jane said that shortly after the plotline was developed, she was again mistaken for Gabrielle at the Soap Awards.
She continued: “The actor was mortified when I pointed out who I was but of course I don’t mind being mistaken for Gabby, it is a huge compliment and secretly I was thinking ‘that’s brilliant, this storyline is going to work so well’.”
Gabrielle agreed the pair have been mistaken for each other for years, forcing her into “constantly” denying she was in Casualty, while Jane “insisted” she wasn’t in Brookside.
Gabrielle added: “A very good friend of mine texted me last week to say he caught a bit of Corrie and thought I was very good. I pointed out that I wasn’t on screen yet!!
“When they approached me with the storyline It seemed like fate! What they’ve written is so clever and I’m having a ball working with Jane.”
The doppelganger plotline is set to kick off on August 26 following a mix-up about a parcel collection.
Bernie is collecting Joseph’s new school uniform when she is given a parcel for Fern by a shop assistant who mistakes her for the other woman.
Fern arrives at the house demanding her parcel and accusing Bernie of theft. The women are struck by how alike they are and the following week Fern offers Bernie a dodgy way of earning some money.
