EastEnders star Charlie Brooks stepped away from the Queen Vic to move on to a very surprising new business venture. The Welsh actress revealed on This Morning that she is has been working with Ann Summers for the past four years to come up with a new type of vibrator.
The 41-year-old has launched the U, which she started creating four years ago on her kitchen table, and talked about publicly for the first time this week.
Brought up in Barmouth, the star who played Janine Butcher in the long-running soap, was also talking about starring in fantasy play ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’, when she met with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.
Read more: Married at First Sight UK's George shares wedding photo of himself with a mystery bride
It has been compared to ‘Stranger Things’ on stage, but it was the new business venture that got the duo giggling. Phil said he had "absolutely no idea" that Charlie had her own business, and she went on to explain what it was. Subscribe to our daily Showbiz newsletter here for the latest news.
"I was approaching my 40th birthday, and I felt like my life was standing still," she said. "As an actress you can spend quite a lot of time uninspired, so I got a business coach, and I gave up booze and made a lot of changes in my life.
"I started to do a lot of work on myself and started to have creativity ideas. I remembered having a conversation with somebody about seven or eight years ago about the shape of the clitoris, and that it was shaped like a wish bone. So that must have stuck with me on some level and I started thinking about how we didn't have that education at school.
"Then I woke up in the middle of the night about four years ago, why isn't there a vibrator that surrounds the clitoris, that surrounds the vulva and doesn't penetrate? I went on this journey. I ordered some clay and I started making it around my kitchen table"
At which point, Phil turned to the camera and said: "You weren't expecting this!"
Charlie admitted that this was the first time she had talked about it publicly but continued: "I have had so much self doubt, fear of talking about it. I am a confident girl but can be uncomfortable in my own body, so I just had this idea. Researched the market and there was nothing.
"I went on the journey and I started making one around the the kitchen table. I went to product designers and I asked for help and I met with a couple of big companies who are pioneering in the industry. I met with the team at Ann Summers, sat around the table and they loved it and said they hadn't seen anything like it. It has been four years in the making, but it is all very exciting."
The actress has been in EastEnders on and off for decades, working on other projects in between her stints in the BBC soap. Her 18-month contract for her latest reappearance came to an explosive end at Christmas.
Read more:
- Huge food festival featuring some of UK's top chefs is coming to Cardiff's Bute Park
- Win a personalised Love Island bundle to celebrate the brand new series
- ITVX The Reunion cast, plot, location and episodes as Ioan Gruffudd drama lands
- 24 Hours in A&E teen Kye's cardiac arrest while playing football has viewers in tears
- Test your knowledge with the Happy Valley quiz
