Catherine Tyldesley hasn’t ruled out a return to Coronation Street, saying “never say never”.

The actress announced she was leaving the popular ITV soap in December 2017 and her final scenes aired in August 2018.

She played Eva Price for seven years and speaking to Prima magazine, she explained that she would “always look back with such great fondness” and that she has been asked to return “a couple of times”.

She told Prima magazine: “Coronation Street feels like forever ago, but I always look back with such great fondness.

“They’ve asked me to go back a couple of times over the years, and it just so happened that I was busy with other projects.

“But if they approached me with an amazing storyline and the time was right, of course, I’d go back. So it’s always a case of never say never.”

The actress, 41, is reunited on screen with her former Corrie co-star, singer Shayne Ward, in Channel 5’s The Good Ship Murder with the second series starting again this month following a Christmas special.

Ward rose to fame as the winner of the second series of The X Factor and appeared on Coronation Street as Aidan Connor, plays cabaret singer-turned-detective Jack Grayling in the drama.

Tyldesley stars as First Officer Kate Woods in the crime drama set on a cruise ship and told Prima of working with Ward again: “We’re like the naughty kids at school who shouldn’t be sat together!

“It makes life so much easier because we’ve got that relationship, which gives us good chemistry.

“And he kept me sane during season one, because I’d just had a baby, and his other half had also just had a baby, and so we kind of propped each other up emotionally while we were both missing the kids.

“He’s seen me cry a million times. So I thought, ‘It’s fine, I can be a hormonal mess around Shayne’.”

The mother of two who has a son, Alfie, and daughter, Iris, with husband Tom Pitfield, also spoke about her relationship with her body saying it is “probably like most women: up and down”.

She added: “I found it very difficult after my second child. I hate the words ‘spring back’ because you’ve achieved something so amazing.

“But I’ll be honest: I didn’t feel like myself. I felt unfit, I felt weak, I felt vulnerable. I had hyperemesis.

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“I had chronic sickness and pregnancy insomnia. So it got to the point where the doctor was like, ‘We’re going to have to do something because your quality of life is really bad at the moment.’

“I was just losing my mind, mental health-wise, trying to manage on two or three hours of sleep each night.”

Tyldesley was part of the celebrity Strictly Come Dancing line-up in 2019 and she has also starred in BBC sitcom Scarborough.

The February 2025 issue of Prima is now on sale.