TINA KELLEGHER plays N i a m h  D i l l o n.
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Tina Kellegher could not be happier that the biggest production of her life so far attracted not a single member of the press or public.

Tina had spent months trying to keep the details of her wedding to Ballykissangel location manager Gordon Wycherley a secret from the media. As she walked down the aisle in a secluded corner of County Kildare, the smile on her face was all the broader for knowing that she had succeeded. "We planned it so that nobody knew anything, and nobody did, it wasn't in any newspaper or magazine," she smiles."It all worked out rather well."

Tina was introduced to Gordon five years ago by his actor brother Don, Ballykissangel's new priest, Father Aidan. "We did Comedy of Errors at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and he got us together," she recalls with a wistful smile.

During the series' early days she and Gordon kept their relationship to themselves. The couple feared their romance might attract the sort of lurid headlines generated when news of Dervla Kirwan and Stephen Tompkinson's relationship slipped out from the set."Nobody knew that I was going out with a member of the crew," she says.

"But I had been going out with him for years before Ballykissangel. I think that was one of the reasons I was very careful about it because it was not a Ballykissangel romance, it was a real world romance. It had nothing to do with the series but it could easily have turned into that, particularly given what had happened with Stephen and Dervla. People are looking for that."

At one point, rather than declaring her love for Gordon, Tina let gossip columns link her with her on-screen partner. "There were times when people were convinced that Peter Hanly and I were going out with each other," she says with a slow shake of her head."But I just kept a low profile. You can really put your soul into publicity but I don't tend to go down that road," she adds

Tina, for one, was delighted by the news that the series was returning for a fourth time. "It suited me personally, having just got married. So it was nice to have another year of it," she says.

The demands of her role in Ballykissangel are offering her enough challenges for now, she admits, although other roles have been offered to her.

With the powerful personality of Assumpta gone, Tina's character Niamh moves into the centre of village life. Her father buys her the pub, Fitzgerald's, and she evolves into a hard-headed businesswoman."Niamh's been growing all the time, so it's a continuation of that progression," she explains. "It's also the fact that Assumpta is gone. She can be her own person now because she was always in Assumpta's shadow."


 		 

 
 

THE CAST
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