Kelvin Fletcher has been an actor since he was a child, playing Andy Sugden on Emmerdale for two decades, before going on to star in TV dramas and on the theatre stage. But the star’s acting skills were put to the test when he decided to arrange the mother of all surprise parties for his wife Liz to celebrate her 40th birthday.

Kelvin Fletcher’s surprise for wife Liz

Unbeknownst to Liz, Kelvin had spent days secretly transforming the family’s 120-acre farm into a fabulous festival site, complete with fun fair games, a 100-foot inflatable assault course with ball pits and slides, a stone-fired pizza stand and a tepee strewn with twinkling fairy lights and haybales. “I would be sneaking out to mow the fields and put the tepee up until one in the morning,” Kelvin, 39, tells HELLO! as the couple, who are parents to Marnie, seven this month, Milo, four, and 15-month-old twins Maximus and Mateusz, exclusively share photos from the special day with us. “I’d tell Liz I was checking on the sheep – but my excuses were getting thinner and thinner.”

Liz was overcome with emotion

Photos: TOM PITFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY 

Thankfully, he pulled it off with flying colours, gathering around 80 of their closest family and friends for an unforgettable party – much to the astonishment of his actress wife. “I had no idea,” Liz, who turned 40 on 13 July, tells us. “To see all these faces I know stood there, it was the most overwhelming feeling: complete joy.”

Kelvin had cleverly sent Liz on a spa weekend with a friend to get her out of the house while he put the final touches on the festival scene, and guests began arriving. On her return, he met Liz in their driveway and led her towards the field down a literal memory lane, which he had lined with photographs of their life together. Then, they were met by the waiting crowd, which included their four excited children. When she realised what was going on, Liz cried with joy.

Kelvin’s secret plan

“Everywhere I turned, I saw people I hadn’t seen for ages and I think that’s what made me so emotional,” she says. “It felt so special that everyone had made the effort to come.” Kelvin had let Marnie and Milo in on the surprise the day before. “I said: ‘Guys, I’ve got a secret to tell you…’ I explained we’re going to do a surprise party for Mummy and we can’t tell her anything. Milo kept saying: ‘Well, I’ll just tell her a little bit’. But they took it in their stride, and they didn’t give the game away. They were really excited.”

Festival-goers – including their farmer neighbour Gilly Storer and Kelvin’s Emmerdale co-star Chris Bisson, who plays Jai Sharma on the ITV soap – were well fed and watered, with a drinks trailer serving wine and local gins, and pizzas being freshly made. Telling us about his highlight of the party, Kelvin says: “At the end of the day, pretty much everyone had gone, and the heavens had opened but we just danced. For a moment, it was like winding the clock back.”

Life on the farm

Since upping sticks and moving their family from Manchester to the beautiful Cheshire countryside in February 2021, Kelvin and Liz have become intent on sharing a slice of their good life with those around them. They have an ever-expanding menagerie of animals on the farm, including their pet cava pooch on Ginger and a whole host of sheep, alpacas, horses, rare breed pigs, chickens and a herd of cattle.

The family are nearing the end of filming for their new docuseries Fletcher’s Family Farm on ITV, following the success of Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure on BBC1. “It’ll be a nice glimpse into the ups and downs of farming,” explains Kelvin. “There’s idyllic moments but there’s also the chaos of having a young family.”