Helen Baxendale gifts her "pretty bad" pottery to everyone she knows.

Helen Baxendale

Helen Baxendale

The former 'Friends' star regularly gets crafty with clay and though she admits she isn't particularly skilled at her hobby, she enjoys giving her pots away even though they aren't really fit for purpose.

She said: "I'm into cycling and pottery. There's something deep within us that wants to make things.

"I do it once a week and I'm pretty bad, even though I've been doing it for a year.

"My pots are like cannonballs, if you threw them at someone you'd kill them.

"I give them to everybody for presents, we eat out of them, drink out of them, but they're heavy and only really good for weightlifting."

The 48-year-old actress - who has three children with partner David L. Williams - likes watching TV to be a "sociable" experience with her family, though she admitted they aren't up to date with the latest technology or streaming services.

She told Radio Times magazine: "We've still got a cathode ray TV with a big back. An ancient, massive thing.

"All our teenagers' friends come round and say the TV is really cool.

"The picture is so much better than HD TV's - everything looks like film.

"It's not digital and we haven't got Netflix. It's too confusing. So we can't pause anything. We can turn it off...

"I like to make it sociable. When I was growing up, we used to be like 'The Royle Family', sitting around and watching lots of TV and commenting on it. It was our focal point....

"It's easy not to be sociable nowadays and just sit alone and watch it on your iPad."

One thing guaranteed to make Helen turn off the TV is to see herself on screen.

She admitted: "I can't stand it. I pretend it's not happening."


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