Call the Midwife star Stephen McGann has opened up about meeting and falling "madly in love" with his wife and creator of the hit show, Heidi Thomas.
The couple first met back in the mid-1980s, when Thomas had just completed writing the play that McGann was auditioning for.
According to McGann, who plays Doctor Patrick Turner on the BBC show, the pair met during a script reading for the play in Liverpool – and it only took a few minutes for him to realise he was smitten, calling it "love at first sight".
Speaking to The Sunday Times, McGann said: "The first time I met Heidi was through a script.
"In the mid-1980s I got a call from my agent saying Liverpool Playhouse wanted to see me for a play by a new writer. I'd had a really busy day and was in a foul mood but I started reading the script and it was brilliant. I thought the writer was probably about 48 and prematurely grey, but I walked into the audition and there was this young girl talking five hundred to the dozen.
"We started chatting about the character and by the time I left the room I was madly in love. Years later we were talking about love at first sight, saying what an idiotic theory it is. Then we realised that had happened to us."
McGann explained how they soon lost touch, however, as each of them had respective partners when they met, and it wasn't until a few years later when they bumped into each other again in a Liverpool hotel that McGann had a life-changing revelation.
"We had the most ridiculous argument over nothing and I stormed off. I got to my room and realised she was the woman I was supposed to marry," McGann noted.
"The next day she pushed a book of poetry under my door and left her number."
The pair later married in 1990, with McGann adding: "We're now at the stage where people break into spontaneous applause when we tell them how long we've been married [31 years].
"At the altar, we promised to love and honour, but she never promised to obey me. I love her but I've never expected her to listen to anything I say."
Call the Midwife is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
BBC Call the Midwife series 8
BBC Call the Midwife - Complete Collection Series 1-8 and Christmas Specials
W&N Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s - Jennifer Worth
W&N Farewell to the East End - Jennifer Worth
Weidenfeld and Nicholson Letters to the Midwife: Correspondence with Jennifer Worth
W&N Shadows of the Workhouse - Jennifer Worth
