Cheryl Fergison fell for Moroccan toyboy over Skype after his daring 5-word response

Finding fame playing hapless Heather Trott in EastEnders, Cheryl Fergison’s rollercoaster life is as dramatic as any Albert Square plot. Now, as she approaches 60, her bombshell autobiography, Behind The Scenes, gives a candid insight into some of her most memorable moments.

In part three of our exclusive series, in extracts adapted from her book, Cherylreveals how she met her Moroccan husband Yassine el Jamouni, 39 - who is 21 years her junior - for the first time, after falling in love while they chatted online.

And, in the words of her great pal and EastEnders stalwart, Steve McFadden, who wrote the foreword to her book: “When Cheryl tells a story, people listen. She is engaging and holds court like no one else.”

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“Yassine, or Yas, as I came to call him, was warm, funny and endlessly curious,” Cheryl writes.

“I was a 45-year-old single mum, divorced and juggling work with caring for my kid. He was 24 and living in a suburb in Agadir, Morocco, he fixed computers in hotels, spoke Arabic, French and German and was teaching himself English from tourists, telly, music and now … me. I was basically his human Duolingo, and we started typing to each other late into the night.”

And so their online friendship unfolded, with him sending her selfies with his family.

“Of course I was struck by his handsome brooding looks with caramel skin and artful stubble, but the chat also felt innocent.”

In EastEnders at the time, Cheryl continues: “Soon, we were messaging every single day. I would race home from the set after a long day filming, eager to see if Yas had written and there it would be: a little flurry of messages like modern-day love letters, all waiting to be opened.”

Cautious not to reveal too much about herself, her reticence only fuelled Yas’s curiosity.

Cheryl writes: “His next message popped up a second later: ‘I don’t understand. Are you in MI5?’ I howled. The thought of me sneaking about in a trench coat with a handgun, drinking matinis and defusing bombs between takes on Albert Square was so ridiculous.”

Eventually confessing to being a “larger lady,” with trust issues, she began to open up to the handsome Moroccan and they progressed to nightly Skype audio calls. Cheryl was seriously falling for Yas.

She writes: “He started signing off each call with: ‘Goodnight beautiful.’

“And one night, just before hanging up, he said it, ‘I think I love you.’

“I whispered it back, heart thudding, ‘I think I love you too.’”

Her feelings continued to escalate until, shutting her laptop one night a while later, she decided: “I’m going to meet this man.”

And that was how she found herself in Gatwick Airport, being recognised by EastEnders fans, as she waited for a flight to Casablanca, Morocco, where she would pick up a 35-minute transfer to Yas’s hometown of Agadir.

Once there, the panic started to set in.

She writes: “My heart started to pound. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. What am I doing here?

“You’ve flown to a country you’ve never been to before, to meet a man you’ve never seen in person and you don’t even speak the language. Are you completely mad?

“I looked around for Yas, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I fumbled for my bottle of water in my bag, hands shaking, when my trusty battered black case with the purple ribbon tied to the handle toppled over with a thud.

“I bent to grab it, another hand reached down at the same time. It was his hand, Yas’s hand. And there he was.”

Just months later, she recalls Yas telling her: “‘I knew the second I saw you, Cheryl. That you were my future wife and that I was going to marry you.’"

And when she eventually accepted his proposal and told her EastEnders pal Steve McFadden, she writes: “Steve gave a low chuckle and stood up to pull me into one of his trademark bear hugs. ‘Blimey,’ he said, giving me a squeeze, ‘it only took you going halfway across the world to find a bloke….You’d better tell the scriptwriters then. Heather Trott getting a Moroccan husband might be the best storyline they’ve had in years!’”

But romantic their wedding on 2 May, 2011, was not.

She writes: “It was the worst wedding I’ve ever been to. It was just me and Yas in a register office in Agadir. It was a small, tiled room that honestly felt about the size of a public toilet. The bloke marrying us looked like the spitting image of Mr Bean.

“Married in a tiled toilet by a Moroccan version of Mr Bean. Only my life, honestly!”

In 2015, Cheryl was diagnosed with cancer of the womb and told she needed a hysterectomy.

She writes: “The doctor came in, closed the door gently behind him and gave me that look. ‘Cheryl,’ he said softly, ‘I’m really sorry. It’s not good news. You have cancer. Stage II womb cancer.’

“It felt like a soap storyline, like I was watching myself on an episode of EastEnders.

“My first thought was, am I going to die?’ My second, how do I tell Alex? Then Yas popped into my head. He was in Morocco. What would he say? Would he want me when he knew kids were totally off the table?

“I wanted to scream, ‘Why me?’

“I wanted the director to yell 'cut' and for the scene to be over and for me to be able to walk off set.

“But somewhere underneath all the shock and sadness, something flickered deep inside. I’d been knocked down before and every single time I’d stood back up. I could do it again.”

Plunged into an early menopause by her hysterectomy, she experienced some tragi-comic moments, with which many menopausal women will identify.

After searching high and low for her keys one night, she writes: “The next morning, I go to heat up some milk and there they are. My keys are in the bloody microwave. Brilliant, Cheryl. Top marks. Why on earth are they in the microwave? Was I planning to defrost them?

“It turns out that having no womb means hormonal doom. We’re talking mood swings, brain fog, hot flushes that make you feel like you’re slow roasting in an oven, night sweats and tears over nothing. Isn’t it just marvellous being a woman?”

Cheryl Fergison: Behind The Scenes (published by Mirror Books, £22) is on sale on Thursday in all good bookshops and Amazon.