Robert Cavanah as Ian Chamberlain in Emmerdale

DS Foy may be a huge hit on screen at the moment, but it’s not the first time actor Robert Cavanah has appeared in Emmerdale...
Carena Crawford
By Carena Crawford

DS Foy may be a huge hit on screen at the moment, but it’s not the first time actor Robert Cavanah has appeared in Emmerdale – he also played Ian Chamberlain in 2014

In fact, he was instrumental in a big storyline featuring the legend that was Val Pollard.

Robert Cavanah as Val's lover Ian (Credit: ITV/Shutterstock)
Robert Cavanah as Val’s lover Ian (Credit: ITV/Shutterstock)

Ian Chamberlain in Emmerdale

In 2012, Val Pollard had a week-long holiday fling whilst she was in Portugal. But it was in January 2014 when this came back to haunt her.

The man in question, Ian Chamberlain, was played by Robert Cavanah. He arrived to give Val the news he had contracted HIV. He got it from a woman he had a fling with prior to Val and may have passed it on to her. Ian insisted Val needed to get a test as his wife had left him and wouldn’t let him see his kids until she knew Val’s results.

When he returned later that month, Val lied she was all-clear and told him never to contact her again.

However a while later she did contact Ian again when she discovered she was HIV positive and arranged to meet him. Ian turned up and got a punch from her husband Eric for his trouble.

Val and Ian get together

But Ian and Val began to bond and, after confiding that his family still weren’t speaking to him, he confessed he was starting to like Val. Val then broke the news to Eric she and Ian were together – but on her part it was purely a bid to make Eric jealous. It worked and he struggled to see them together.

Things weren’t right for Val and Ian though. He liked Swedish films and Val, well, she did not! After a few days, Val decided she was going to dump Ian. But he then booked them a holiday and she decided not to!

Eric, thinking he still had a chance to reconcile with Val, was heartbroken to catch the pair of them kissing. Val was pleased to have made him jealous.

But the whole relationship was starting to feel uncomfortable for Val. She didn’t want to be intimate with him and he was getting on her nerves. She did decide to end it and he left the village. Meanwhile, Pollard and Val reunited and the rest, as they say, is history – until her death in 2015, of course.