Helen Bonham Carter to play Crossroads legend who lost everything Noele ‘Nolly’ Gordon in new ITV series

HELENA Bonham Carter is to play Crossroads legend Noele Gordon in a new ITV drama.

Forty years after Noele’s shock sacking from Crossroads, ITV have commissioned Nolly, a three-part series exploring her all-powerful reign, and subsequent fall from grace.

Noele - known as Nolly to her friends - was a legend in her own lifetime.

As flame-haired widow Meg Richardson in the long-running soap pera Crossroads, she was one of the most famous people in Britain.

Then in 1981, at the height of the show’s success and the peak of Nolly’s fame, she was axed without ceremony, without warning and with no explanation.

With the boss’s words “all good things must come to an end” ringing in her ears, Noele Gordon found herself thrown out of the show that was her life for over 18 years.

Nolly will be written by BAFTA-winning writer Russell T Davies, behind hit series including It's A Sin and Queer as Folk.

Helena, 55, said: "Noele Gordon was a fascinating, complex, brilliant and gutsy woman – none of which I knew before I read Russell T Davies’ script.

"I’m so thrilled to help tell Nolly’s long overdue and largely forgotten story. Russell’s screenplay is a work of brilliance and I hope I’ll do him and Nolly justice. I can’t wait to start.”

ITV Head of Drama, Polly Hill, said: "Russell’s scripts are magnificent and a great tribute to Noele Gordon, but also to our national love of soaps and a celebration of the incredible women they create.

Helena Bonham Carter is going to be amazing as Nolly and we can’t wait for her to step into those shoes.”

Russell added: "One of my very first jobs in TV was a trial script for Crossroads, and I've wanted to write the story of behind the scenes on that show for 40 years. At last, the truth can be told!”

Nolly will go into production next year.