Former Eastenders actress, Martine McCutcheon has revealed that she had serious doubts about accepting her role in new ITV soap, Echo Beach when it was first offered to her.

Martine plays an unhappily married, repressed, millionaire housewife in Echo Beach.

“I didn’t understand the concept of the show very well,” Martine told the Daily Record. “I also wondered why they wanted me to play this repressed, woman in her mid 40s - 10 years older than me.”

However, Martine quickly changed her mind when she discovered that Tony Marchant, who created her EastEnders character Tiffany, had written the scripts for both Echo Beach and its sister show, Moving Wallpaper.

“When I realised Tony wrote Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper I wanted to be a part of it,” she explained. “Especially because Tony gave me the opportunity to play Tiffany - which is a part people still talk about. So I embraced it, although this was quite a frustrating character to play.”

Moving Wallpaper starts on Thursday at 9.00pm on ITV1, with Echo Beach following at 9.30pm.