Neighbours star Alan Fletcher reveals last four weeks of axed soap are ‘incredible’
Neighbours is coming to an end but Alan Fletcher has promised fans the beloved show is going out with a bang.
The 65-year-old actor – who first appeared as Dr. Karl Kennedy on the Aussie soap in 1994, having played mechanic Greg Cooper for a short spell seven years earlier – admitted it’s emotional knowing he’s filmed his last scenes, but viewers have plenty to look forward to.
Appearing on Monday’s episode of This Morning, he said: ‘The last four weeks of the show, the stories are incredible… The really good thing is, we know there are lots of returning characters but the writers have been very clever.
‘They’ve integrated people who return into the stories. It’s not gratuitous – they come back for a story.’
Among the biggest names heading back to Ramsay Street are undoubtedly Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan as Charlene and Scott Robinson, while the likes of Guy Pearce also popping in to say farewell.
‘Everyone wants to come back and say thank you. Guy, he’s a big film star. It was exactly like we were back when I last saw him,’ Alan admitted.
Meanwhile he had some words of advice for his castmates as they approached the final scenes, as he revealed: ‘I said to people at the end of it, we should allow ourselves to be sad that the journey’s over, but we have to be so grateful we got to go on the journey at all!’
He took that to heart, as he had ‘a bit of a tear’ in his eye after seeing a montage of his run on the soap, although with a yearly rolling contract he insisted the idea of being cut was always in the back of his head.
He said: ‘You’re prepared to leave every year. 28 years I’ve been there, but every year you’re a rooster one day, you’re a feather duster the next. This could end at any time.’
Thankfully, Alan took his chance and managed to nab something from the set before leaving for the final time, and he was delighted with the unique piece of Neighbours history he was able to swipe.
‘Every time, the tears are real and they feel real in the moment.’ – him and Jackie’It was just a wonderful fun show to be on… I knew people. Everyone was absolutely wonderful. They talk about Neighbours being a family atmosphere – it was very much like that back in 1997.’
He recalled: ‘There were people running around putting stickers on things like that was going to mean something! Some people actually did get some photos that they wanted. I photographed every photograph in the hallways.
‘They’re all covered by glass, so I photographed them just so I’d have them – all the cast photos. On the Kennedy set, there was a photo – I gave them this photo. It was me when I was an actor in 1976, doing a play.
‘I had this horrible moustache, wearing a safari suit. That was ostensibly Karl Kennedy at university. Well, everyone wanted that photo. We finished, we did the last scene, they set cut. I just turned around grabbed it, put it under my coat.’
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV. Neighbours airs weekdays at 1.45pm and 6pm on Channel 5.
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