The beautiful ‘femme fatal’ of the UK soap, Emmerdale, with a list of broken marriages, personal disasters and finally being axed from the show to which she had given her all for sixteen years and a show that had seen her as the biggest earning soap star at that time.

Malandra Burrows was named with the joining of the two parts of her parent’s names, Sandra and Malcolm. She was born in Woolton, Liverpool on November 4^th 1965 and began her road to entertainment when she was just six years old. She began by dancing with the encouragement of her mother and appeared on the Yorkshire Television show Junior Showtime and later went on to be the youngest winner ever on the TV show New Faces, a fore runner of Simon Cowell’s Pop Idol show.

By the age of thirteen Malandra had taken her interest in music to another level which saw her winning the BBC Merseyside song writer of the year award in 1978.

Being bitten by the entertainment bug Malandra decided to follow her chosen career as a performer and joined the Everyman Youth Theatre in Liverpool where she took part in productions with a local amateur dramatics company at St Peter's, in Woolton, whilst continuing to perform musically.

Not only was Malandra a budding success on the stage but she completed her education with a total of eleven ) Levels and enrolled in a drama school where she studied her chosen artistic direction of acting and changed her name to Burrows when she registered with Equity.

Malandra’s first television role was in the long running channel 4 soap opera Brookside in 1982 which saw her returning to play two separate roles.

But Malandra’s biggest brake came when she auditioned for the role of Kathy Bates in Emmerdale, which at the time was known as Emmerdale Farm and landed the role which she went on to bring to life for the next sixteen years.

Burrow’s role was one of the longest running in the show which she filled from 1985 until 2001 and even after she left the show she even returned for a brief spell in 2005 to attend the funeral of the character Seth Armstrong.

During her time on Emmerdale, Kathy became known for being one of the most married characters in the soap and had gained a reputation for entering into ill fated relationships.

In the show Burrow’s first husband, Jackie Merrick shot himself by mistake in 1989, then she went on to marry a wheelchair bound Chris Tate and that marriage ended when Chris had an affair in 1995. Next she married Dane Glover who was killed in a fire and on fiancé even left her standing at the alter in 1999.

Malandra’s role was not just confined to dubious relationships and marriages but her personal life in the soap was strewn with disasters, to name but a few, she was kidnapped, run over by a horse, trapped in the wreckage of a bus and imprisoned after attending a protest.

Her time on the cast of Emmerdale, Malandra was reportedly one of the soap's highest paid stars of the time seeing her earning a whopping £80,000 annually.

Her beauty and her role of helpless maiden led to her being stalked by a mental health patient who escaped from care and threatened to kill her. During this time she was given a two month police protection unit.

Malandra reportedly turned down a role which was specifically written for her in the movie Shirley Valentine which starred Pauline Collins in 1989. But remaining loyal to her chosen soap opera Malandra turned down many other roles but eventually her loyalty was only rewarded with her being dropped from the show in 2001.

Along with her acting career Malandra also courted the music industry and in 1990 she released a single, Just The Side of Love which reached number 11 in the UK charts.

She followed this up with a self penned single Summernight Love in 1996. This resulted in a recording contract with Warner Bros. and two more singles Carnival in Heaven and Don't Leave Me also hit the UK charts but with much less success than the previous singles.

In 2006 Burrows entered late into the series of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! on day seven. Burrows and fellow contestant Myleene Klass were required to clamber on to a seesaw platform 200ft above the jungle floor and take turns to collect corresponding flags hanging off the edges of the platform. Each pair of flags, collected in numerical order, equaled a much needed meal for camp. Malandra was the 6th celebrity to be evicted in a head-to-head with Dean Gaffney.

For a short time after leaving the jungle Malandra dated fellow contestant David Gest, former husband of Liza Minnelli, which was revealed in a documentary about David Geest.

Malandra remains unmarried and lives in Yorkshire.

ABB