Coronation Street’s Beverley Callard has a ‘secret grandchild’

In a bizarre echo of a recent soap plot, Coronation Street actress Beverley Callard has a secret grandchild she’s never even met.

Bev’s one-year-old granddaughter Harrie and her mum Laura Cross live just down the road from the 59-year-old star. Harrie is the daughter of Jon McEwan – son of Beverley’s husband from a previous relationship, also called Jon.

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In an interview with the Sunday Mirror, Laura said: “Beverley spoke on TV about how much she missed her grandchildren – when she has a granddaughter just down the road in Manchester who’s crying out for time with her.

“I did feel sorry for her. She obviously loves them and I feel she is being deprived of loving Harrie. This is her husband’s first grandchild.

Beverley recently appeared on Loose Women and told panellists how much she was missing her grandkids. “I don’t see them as often as I’d like,” she said. “It takes you by surprise the love that you have for them. They’re so funny.

“They think of Jon and I as the naughty grandparents because the other grandparents are quite sensible. We’re not.”

It was this TV appearance that prompted Laura to, er, get in touch with the tabloids.

“I had to fight back tears,” the 34-year-old explained. “Harrie may not be her biological grandchild but she’s her husband’s blood relative. I can’t see why they’ve not reached out.”

Laura and Jon met through dating app Tinder in January last year. They slept together but the relationship fizzled out as they had little in common. Despite believing she was infertile following surgery on her fallopian tubes, she later discovered she was pregnant with his child.

“I knew the baby was Jon’s and hoped we’d have a mature and civil relationship moving forward,” she explains. “But when I sent him a text asking him to call me, explaining it was important, he refused so I had to break the news via text and send a scan.”

“Jon made it clear that he wouldn’t be having any further contact with her or Harrie because she had been born from a one-night stand. He asked her not to contact her but has agreed to make CSA payments towards her upbringing.

“She was born in November and by February I still hadn’t heard from him. I messaged Jon’s dad but I never heard from him either.

“I don’t want Harrie to grow up, watch Coronation Street and say, ‘that’s my grandma’ on TV and that be the closest she gets to her dad’s family.”