Michael Lurie who plays camp Marc St James in hit US comedy, Ugly Betty, was only meant to star in the shows pilot and should have been dropped after his first epsiode.

Michael said: “The original idea was for Wilhelmina to fire her assistant every week and hire a new one.

“I only had a few scenes in the pilot but I decided to do as much as I could with the part and Vanessa Williams, who plays Wilhelmina, was a major support from the beginning,” he told Manchester Evening News.

“She would tell me to stand closer and suggest funny things for us to do together. Oh, and she had this funny thing where she’d bark my name, so in the end they couldn’t cut me out of the scenes.”