ITV Emmerdale’s eagle-eyed fans in disbelief as they recognise EastEnders villain on soap

Emmerdale’s eagle-eyed fans were in disbelief on Monday night as they recognised an EastEnders villain on the hit ITV soap.

In a huge soap crossover, viewers were left distracted on Monday’s instalment as struggling new dad Billy Fletcher attempted to park at the hospital to see his baby son, Evan, who was recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. However, Billy couldn’t get the parking machine to work as it kept rejecting his money.

A parking attendant then came over, who offered no help or support to the clearly struggling new dad. After suggesting Billy use the parking app, the latter was left further annoyed to have no signal and the parking attendant didn’t prove helpful in securing a Wi-Fi password, leaving Billy utterly furious as he snapped.

However, soap watchers were left distracted during the scenes as they recognised the actor Ian Gain who played the car park attendant. In a huge soap crossover, actor Ian has recently been playing villain Rufus in EastEnders, who has been organising fights and causing trouble for George Knight.

Taking to Twitter, now X, one person said: “Was that car park attendant on now in @emmerdale,in @bbceastenders last week being the underground boxing organiser ?? #emmerdale #eastenders”, a different account put: “Err wasn’t the parking attendant in Emmerdale today, in Eastenders last week as a boxing host?” while another added: “Wasn’t this car parking guy the same guy who was the fight organiser in #Eastenders?”

This isn’t the first time actor Ian has appeared in Emmerdale as he starred in the ITV soap back in 2019 as a doctor. Other soap roles include Doctors, Casualty, Coronation Street and The Bill. It comes as Monday’s episode saw Billy and wife Dawn Fletcher hit crisis point amid the stress of their son’s health battle.

While Dawn has been staying at the hospital with Evan, who has been undergoing chemotherapy, Billy has been splitting his time between the hospital and home as he takes care of their other two children Lucas and Clemmie. After Billy’s difficult morning on Monday and parking troubles, it meant he was late for an appointment at the hospital. Dawn had to sit through the meeting on her own, learning that Evan won’t need a bone marrow transplant but will still need another two or three years of chemotherapy.

Dawn was furious over Billy being absent despite the latter explaining his parking woes as she confronted him, having a blazing row. After the showdown, Billy left the room and collapsed in the corridor sobbing in tears.

Emmerdale airs every week night at 7:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX, with an hour-long episode on Thursdays.