Emmerdale legend Danny Miller is enjoying an exciting project worlds away from the beloved ITV soap.
The Aaron Dingle star, 33, began recording audiobooks for children last year after he was inspired by his young son Albert’s love of reading.
The I’m A Celebrity winner, who shares two children with wife Steph Jones – announced last summer that he was teaming up with his friend and radio presenter Nigel Clucas, to release a range of spoken stories for children under the name Albert’s Bookshelf.
Revealing how much his new project has grown, he told BBC News: ‘We’ve got an app that allows us to see where people are downloading it and there’s some countries, if I’m absolutely honest, I hadn’t even heard of.
‘You know, I think, last time I counted, it was 119 countries.’
Danny added that the project has ‘kind of gone from recording a few books to being this sort of endless ideas of getting more education to the kids.’
Fellow soap stars including Coronation Street’s Ryan Thomas and Andy Whyment have taken part in Albert’s Bookshelf, and even joined him as guest readers.
This comes after actor Danny expressed his distaste for his character’s bad-boy image.
‘For years, I was like: “I want to be the bad boy,” he admitted.
‘He was always the misunderstood, angry kind of thing, but it was: “I want to be the bad boy. I want to say things that shock actors in line runs and rehearsals.” You start to play it and you start to see the audience reaction from it and then you go “Actually, I don’t like this.”’
The fan reaction to some of Aaron’s recent exploits has been quite negative, the actor revealed. ‘Seeing stuff on social media, a lot of fans have hated this version of Aaron. I think hate’s a really strong word, but that’s kind of what it is,’ he said.
The I’m A Celebrity winner recalled how difficult it was playing Aaron at his worst. ‘I had to say some horrible lines to Jim Hooton – Sam Dingle – about being a half-man, half-scarecrow. I couldn’t do it. It took ages to be able to do it, because me and Jim were laughing at it almost because it was so shocking and so awful that it’s almost laughable.’
While Aaron’s behaviour was quite vile, Danny could understand the pain that was behind it.
‘Hundreds of people throughout the time I’ve been back have said: “I don’t like you like that, why is he like that?” But then you actually break it down. It’s something he said to Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb). He lost Jackson, he lost Robert, he lost Ben, Liv died, his gran died, his dog died. He’s had so many things thrown at him, it’s no wonder that he’s angry at life.
‘As tedious as it is to play, when you actually break it down, you can see why he’s like that. I can totally, totally understand why he would be angry at life.’
