Bobby's​​​​​​​ girl

TV Times talks to Michelle Keegan about playing Tina Moore, wife of England’s World Cup-winning captain Bobby, in a candid new ITV drama…

- Judy Ewens

On a sweltering hot day in July, TV Times is downstairs in a social club in Warrington when Michelle Keegan brushes past us in a bridal gown.

‘This will be a challenge,’ she tells us with a smile as, while a member of the crew holds her train, she carefully negotiates her way up the steep, narrow staircase which leads to the function room.

There, the tables are littered with bottles of Babycham and halffull ashtrays – we are at a wedding reception, circa 1962. And it is none other than that of England’s future World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore and Tina Dean, with the social club standing in for the real venue, a pub in Ilford, Essex.

We’re on set for ITV’s three-part dramatisation of the couple’s love story, Tina and Bobby, with former Coronation Street star Michelle playing Tina, Grantchester’s Lorne MacFadyen as Bobby and Patsy Kensit as Tina’s mum Betty.

Based on Tina’s 2005 memoir Bobby Moore: By the Person Who Knew Him Best, the series traces the pair’s 28-year long relationship. It begins when they met as teenagers in the late 1950s, through their heady days as one of the most glamorous couples of the Swinging Sixties to the break-up of their marriage in the 1980s.