I was told I was too fat for telly or I was too disabled...Wish I'd known WIS Chow hot I was!

Rivals star Denise pleads: 'Love people as they are'

- BY SUE CRAWFORD

CORONATION Street seductress Denise Black has revealed how, as a young actress, she was told by people in TV: "You've got a lovely face. It's a shame about your body." She earned millions of fans during her five years on the cobbles playing hairdresser Denise Osbourne, who had a passionate affair with Ken Barlow.

But she says some agents and producers wrote her off as "too fat" or too disabled" to be doing her job.

Denise, 67, was born with a condition in the muscles of her right arm, causing her fingers to cross over each other.

She says: "I'm not going to name the TV companies, but I've been told I'm too fat for television, I'm too disabled for television.

"My experience of being a woman was a lack of self-esteem, a lack of certainty that I was right, a desire to please, to look good, to feel very chastened when people pointed out things that were wrong with me." Speaking to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast, she adds: "It lowers your self-esteem. I'm a great one for love people as they are." The actress, who joined Emmerdale in 2013 as Joanie Dingle, the adoptive grandmother of Amy Wyatt's son Kyle believes her condition worsened as a result of trying to hide it on screen.

She explains: "I think the reason it's like this is because for 30 years I hid it out of the camera under the table, and it clawed over through lack of use.