Chris Coghill breathes oxygen into romance for Emmerdale’s Kev and Nicola

Come on, we’ve all thought it, haven’t we?! There’s definitely a spark of sexual tension between sworn enemies, Kev Townsend (Chris Coghill) and Nicola King (Nicola Wheeler) in Emmerdale.

As it stands, both of them deeply love Lewis Barton (Bradley Riches), with Kev recently learning that he’s Lewis’ dad, and Nicola long having had a maternal pull toward her café co-owner, who she treats with more kindness and understanding than…well, anybody else.

But thus far, that’s about all Kev and Nicola have agreed on, with Nicola initially banning Kev from revealing to Lewis that he is, in fact, his biological father, in order to protect him.

Later, when Kev did return and reveal the truth, she colluded with Lewis’ brother, Ross Barton (Michael Parr), to frame Kev for a robbery, with the aim of severing their relationship for good, though it ultimately failed, and Nicola has since begrudgingly accepted Kev’s presence.

Chris was a little cagey, though, simply responding with: ‘Are they now?’ when we told him that fans are utterly convinced that there’s something between the nemeses.

‘She’s married to Jimmy [King (Nick Miles)]!’ he protested afterwards.

While that is technically true, we all know by now that she won’t be for much longer, with Jimmy set to die sooner rather than later.

So, with Jimmy set to depart the Dales – in a box – does Chris think there could be anything between Kev and Nicola?

‘No. It’s like classic playground flirting, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘They just have a go at each other all the time. But they’re getting closer. They’re starting to appreciate each other a bit more.’

…we’ll take that as a maybe, then?

In a previous chat with us, Chris said: ‘They’ve got a funny relationship.

‘I think he likes the fact that she’s protective of Lewis, which he does appreciate. But at the same time she doesn’t want Kev there and there’s a bit of him that does want to win her over.

‘Especially after her trying to get rid of him. And to be fair, him parking the van right outside the cafe was quite an antagonistic thing to do.’

Speaking of poor Jimmy, Kev’s about to make his life infinitely harder when he ends up sabotaging his business on the orders of the increasingly Machiavellian Caleb and Ruby Miligan (William Ash and Beth Cordingly).

‘They enlist Kev to rob a delivery from the haulage firm, which sends the haulage firm into a spiral so Jimmy will agree to them buying it at a cheaper price,’ Chris explained.

‘Ruby tells Kev there’s a massive haul inside and he ends up with 3,000 nappies, they use Kev to do it as blackmail for the Steve thing’

‘The fact is, after Claudette’s elbowed Steve and told him to leave – all of this is off-screen which is why it’s quite hard to get your head round – he heads up to the depot for one last job, and, like I said, none of this is seen on screen, and Kev follows him to stop him and Billy is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘Kev thinks he’s just given him a little love tap, just to stop him in his tracks, but it’s a bit more serious than that.

‘The whole thing with Kev attacking Billy is a little bit weird because it’s never seen on screen in context or why it happened or when it happened. It has to be explained later.

‘It’s on CCTV, which this [Caleb] uses to blackmail him. But yeah, it looks bad…He’s bent over with a crowbar in a pool of blood.’