Emmerdale’s Lucy Pargeter, who plays Chas Dingle on the soap, has said she’s surprised that she’s been on the show for over two decades.

The actor, who’s appeared on the soap for almost 23 years, made her first appearance on Emmerdale in October 2002, when she arrived in the village dressed as a nun for the stag night of cousin Marlon.

Two decades later, she’s spoken of the “privilege” of playing the character for so long and how she feels “blessed” for her long run on the soap.

She said: “I love my job and I’m lucky to have my job and every day, I go into work, I know I’m lucky to still be making this my job, 23 years later after I first signed up to be a stripping nun, you know what I mean?,” she told Kelvin and Liz Fletcher on the Off Script… Coronation Street & Emmerdale podcast.

“I didn’t expect to still be here and for my kids to have got a beautiful place to live, be surrounded by my mates, be challenged every single day, even you know… there is not a day that I go in [and] all I say is, ‘Would you like a pint?’.”

She added: “It’s a privilege. I’m so blessed to have that job and I will never ever take it for granted because it can be taken away from you at any point.”

On the soap, the villagers are currently trying to figure out what caused Chas’s collapse in the pub.

Chas was left visibly unhappy after Aaron Dingle and John Sugden got engaged and upstaged her and partner Liam Cavanagh’s surprise engagement party.

Moments later Chas fell to the ground and hit her head. Later, doctors discovered excessive amounts of codeine in her system, leading to suspicions her medication had been tampered with.

Some of the villagers become suspicious of Ella Forster after she seemed to be struggling with her ex-partner Liam moving on.

Ella was later arrested as suspension mounts, but it’s yet to be seen whether there’s any evidence to link her to the crime.