TOWIE casts friend for Lydia
Lydia Bright is welcoming a good pal to the cast of The Only Way Is Essex. Danni Park-Dempsey, who is a good friend of bakery boss Lydia and her mum Debbie, is joining the ITV2 show, the Sun reports, and will be the first non-white cast member. Danni has just started filming scenes for the show, which has returned to our screens for a fifth series, and received a good luck tweet from Debbie on her first day. "It's your time now. Let the show begin," wrote Debbie. A show source told the paper that Danni is being introduced to the show as a friend of the Brights. They said: "Danni is being brought in because she is bubbly, friendly and opinionated, not because of the colour of her skin. "She is good pals with Lydia and Debbie and will be introduced this way. She has already filmed scenes and can't wait to do more." Some fans joked about the previous lack of diversity on the series, with one writing online: "What do you mean there are no non-white folk on the show? There aren't even white folk on the show - they're all orange."
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.