Verity Rushworth (Donna Windsor-Dingle, Emmerdale)

What’s your favourite musical style?
Favourite musical style has to be blues and swing, especially big band stuff. I love it. Suits everybody to a T.

Who is your favourite artist?
The artists I like are kind of like big singers like Barbara Streisand and people from the musicals like Bernadette Peters, people like that I really like. But then I have to mention Christina Aguilera, for the R & B pop princess.

What’s your earliest singing memory?
About age five I think, in a show at drama school and I’d broken my arm and was dressed as a flower and I was popping out of a flower pot with a broken arm, so I had one arm working and I just remember singing around and skipping a lot.

Musically, who would you compare yourself to?
I’ve got no idea. I kind of go through phases. When I had my vocal session she said you need to be a bit more rockier here, a bit more poppy there, a bit more this there, she said I sound like a girl in a musical. A bit like Julie Andrews. So I need to relax a bit more and get a bit more funky.

What can the audience expect from you?
Exciting performances and lots of jigging about and giggling. I’m just going to give it my all. I’m going to try and strut. I’ve been watching Christina, because I’ve got one of her songs, so I’m going to practice strutting and just, you know, have a laugh.

What would your character say?
Donna Windsor Dingle would die. I think she’d absolutely love it, because she likes being in the attention, especially with the modelling storylines she used to do. But, as far as the singing goes, she can’t sing to save her life, so she’d be horrified, but she’d probably find it quite funny.

How do your friends and family feel about it?
My friends and family have been really supportive and positive, they can’t wait for me to do it. My friends have told me not to be a geek, because I’m known as a bit of a geek and try to be cool, calm and sophisticated and my mum said that as well, which is going to be hard, but I’ll try.

Did you watch last year?
Yes, I came to watch a few times last year and watched on the telly. I came to the part, you know, the girls from Emmerdale, Lucy, Sammy and Roxy, and put my votes in as well, so I was up dancing at the front.

What are your top three artists and albums?
Three artists would be Maroon 5 and their album ‘Songs About Jane’, I love that. Then it would have to be ‘West Side Story’ and the song ‘I Have a Love’, definitely. And then for a funky one it would have to be ‘I Want to Dance with Somebody’, Whitney, her greatest hits.