The stars turn out for the 30 years of Hollyoaks celebrations

Soapstars past and present turned out for a birthday bash to celebrate 30 years of Hollyoaks.

The Channel 4 serial drama marked its 30th anniversary on Monday with a special screening at St George’s Hall in Liverpool.

Introducing the week’s drama-filled episodes, Channel 4’s chief content officer Ian Katz said in the last three decades the soap had seen 57 births, 88 marriages, 51 broken engagements, 294 deaths and 13 serial killers.

He said the “rather unfortunate statistic” made the fictional Chester village about 10 times more dangerous than Tijuana, Mexico, which he described as “the murder capital of the world”.

Gathering to see how much the death toll will rise this week, current cast members were joined by some former colleagues whose characters met their ends on the soap, including Duncan James and Jessica Ellis.

Also on the red carpet were stars of Liverpool-based soap Brookside, which has been brought back to screens after more than 20 years for one of the Hollyoaks anniversary episodes.

Creator of both Hollyoaks and Brookside Sir Phil Redmond, who may be spotted by observant soap fans making a cameo in this week’s episodes, said after 30 years the show had stayed true to its original purpose of making great drama for young people.

He said: “They kept saying ‘teenagers, they don’t watch telly and they can’t concentrate’ and we said ‘well if you make it, they will’. So we did.”

Asked by the evening’s host, Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard, whether he thought Brookside could make a more permanent comeback, Sir Phil said: “My personal opinion is they should never have stopped it.”

Louis Emerick, who joined former Brookside castmates including Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson for the special episode, said it was “brilliant” to return to the close.

He said: “When I saw Sue Johnno, I thought yeah, it’s happening’.”

About 200 Hollyoaks fans joined the cast to watch the screening in the venue, which was filled with some of the soap’s props and costumes.

The episodes begin with preparations for the wedding of Tony Hutchinson, played by Nick Pickard, who was the first character to speak when the show was first aired.

Pickard said: “I love every bit of it still now.

“Back in the day the boys used to all have one house and the girls lived in the other house and we had some flats where some of the other cast lived so we had our soap within a soap.

“We’ve been like a family, the crew as well. You just have a laugh every day.”

Kieron Richardson said his character Ste Hay was originally meant to be in the soap for seven episodes, but had stayed for almost 20 years.

The character was the first gay man in a soap to live with HIV, Richardson said.

“We grew up with the 80s adverts being like ‘it’s a death sentence’ and that’s what the story was about, to show that you can live a heathy, normal life with HIV,” he said.

“So I’m very proud of that.”

Actress Jennifer Metcalfe, who plays Mercedes McQueen, said her character’s cancer storyline had made her feel connected to her father, who died when she was 15.

She added: “I love the awareness that it raised and I love that, yet again, we picked something out of the bag that Mercedes could explore as a character that was just so far removed from what she is from day to day.

“It was such a big challenge and I loved it.”