Adopted Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver found her birth mother through an uncanny coincidence with a co-star – which led her to uncover a secret link with Helen Worth. Even Eileen Grimshaw doesn’t have this drama…

Adopted at 10 days old, the story of how Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver met her birth mother is more incredible than any storyline on the cobbles.

In 1986, aged 23, Sue won a small part in the play Oedipus at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. But when her co-star Michael N Harbour saw her, he went white. He declared to the stage manager: “Oh my God, she’s the spitting image of my wife when I met her.”

Despite their age gap Sue and 41-year-old Michael became firm friends. Writing in her candid new memoir A Work in Progress, Sue says: “I was completely obsessed with him and fascinated by his stories about his family, I wasn’t sure why.”

One Sunday the cast got together for a lunch party and Michael started making fun of Sue’s Northern accent before asking where she was born and her date of birth.

When she answered that she was actually born in Barnet, Greater London, not the North and that she was born on September 2, 1963, Michael immediately called his wife Lesley, announcing: ‘I’ve found her.’

It turned out that Sue’s birth mother Lesley Sizer Grieve had given her up for adoption when she was a 17 year-old single mum, five years before meeting Michael.

Sue (whose birth name was Claire Grieve) was adopted by a young couple Fred and John Cleaver and she went to live with them and their five year-old son Paul. Lesley and Michael meanwhile went on to have two teenage daughters who had no idea they had a half-sister.

But Michael knew his wife had always wondered about her eldest child – the resemblance was so strong and the dates matched and he just knew he had found her.

Michael broke the news to Sue, telling her: ‘You are my wife’s daughter,’ and took her to meet Lesley in a hotel. Sue, best-known as Coronation Street ’s feisty cab switchboard operator Eileen Grimshaw, says: “The walk to the door felt like it went on forever.

I felt such a mixture of anticipation, excitement, fear and adrenaline. We embraced and just talked and talked until 5am.”

“It was almost like a love story. The first two weeks were very heady; we had to be around each other, we had to call each other. She never ever felt like my mum. My Mum who brought me up is [my] mum. But there was a definite attachment.”

Sadly, Lesley died at the start of the pandemic, but Sue adds: “I’ve got two lovely half-sisters. I’m close to them and I see Kate, the youngest one, quite a bit.

My Mum and Dad were so welcoming; Lesley came to my father’s funeral. It’s very much like [we’re] part of a bigger family; it’s been lovely.”

Sue, now 61, joined Coronation Street almost 25 years ago. And in another incredible twist, her cobbles’ co-star Helen Worth (Gail Platt) was once flatmates with Lesley.

“She knew that Lesley had this child [she’d given up],” Sue says. “And Helen is Godmother to one of my half-sisters!”

Sue, who is a panellist on the ITV lunchtime chat show Loose Women, says the discovery never affected her relationship with her parents or her brother Paul.

The actress, whose memoir is out on Thursday, says: “I’ve only ever had one mum and she was so warm and generous. There was no jealousy; she welcomed Lesley with open arms and told her she could visit anytime.”

A Work in Progress by Sue Cleaver is published in hardback by Bloomsbury Publishing on Sept 26, £20