Tamzin Outhwaite has told of a blunder from her early EastEnders days that saw her try to send Christmas cards using a prop postbox on the set of the soap.
The soap star, who is returning to the BBC One programme as Melanie Owen after more than 15 years away, told ITV’s This Morning of her mistake while trying to contain her laughter.
Asked by presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby about her knowledge of postboxes on the set of the soap, Outhwaite – who first appeared on EastEnders in 1998 – burst out laughing.
She said: “This is hilarious! I was telling some of the youngsters in the cast what I did when I first joined, and I joined in like, the August, and that Christmas, it was really busy, I’m on set 12, 14 hours a day sometimes.
“And I took all my Christmas cards into work,” she said, laughing again before adding: “They all had stamps on, some were going to Germany, some were going to America, some were going to Spain.
“I took them all in and I thought, ‘I’ll kill two birds with one stone, I’ll go down and film this scene outside the lot and I’ll pop all of my Christmas cards in the postbox.”
She said that, after she put her cards into the postbox, she asked one of the prop specialists how often the post is collected, to which he appeared confused.
Outhwaite said: “I said, ‘is it twice a day, once a day, once a week – will they get there in time?’ And he went, ‘it’s not real!’”
As Schofield and Willoughby failed to contain their amusement, the soap star said: “I couldn’t get them out!
“So I said, ‘is there any way we could open that, there’s not even in a thing on the back?’”
She joked that she considered smashing it down to get her Christmas cards out.
“They’re still in there,” she said.
“There must be some bit of machinery that could go in and see what else is in there. There’s probably loads of cans and stuff.”
Outhwaite also said that she has no intentions of leaving EastEnders any time soon now that she is back on Albert Square.
“I’m there for a while,” she said.
“At the moment I’m really loving it, so I’ve got no intention of running away.”