Emmerdale is full of colourful characters that enter our lives through our televisions, but not all of them bring us joy. In fact, many of them just get on our nerves or instil strong feelings of dislike – and it is those characters we are paying tribute to here!
Just as every soap fan has their favourite characters, we all have characters that we love to hate. Sometimes it’s because they’re villains, sometimes their storylines turn us against them, and sometimes it’s because they’re just plain boring!
In this article we’ve put together our very own list of the most hated Emmerdale characters of all time, having scoured the internet for opinions from dedicated viewers. This is based on feedback about the show posted online throughout the last two decades that underlines who are the most hated characters and why they are so disliked.
If you’re an Emmerdale fan, or even just a casual viewer, take a look at our list and see if it matches your feelings about the show’s most hated characters – let us know in the comments if we’ve named your favourite character, or if we’ve missed anyone out!
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Viv Hope
To find out who was the most hated character in Emmerdale history we turned to bingo site tombola, which kindly carried out detailed research into the subject. Analysis of more than 100,000 tweets by soap viewers revealed Viv Hope to be the most disliked character, not just in Emmerdale but in any of the UK’s most-watched soaps! More than two thirds of all the tweets about Viv, who died in a post office explosion in 2011, contained negative sentiments about the character, who appeared on the show for almost 18 years and featured in more than 2,000 episodes. Our own research suggested that the most common reason viewers disliked Viv was that they found her annoying or irritating, with plenty of people seemingly quite happy when her part went up, quite literally, in smoke as she slept on the sofa.
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Rhona Goskirk
Widely known as ‘Rhona the moaner’, Rhona Goskirk has appeared in Emmerdale twice, first between 2001 and 2002, and then again from 2010 onwards. Played by Zoe Henry, Rhona has been romantically involved with Marlon Dingle, married Paddy Kirk and discovered him having an affair, been addicted to painkillers and suffered horrendous abuse from husband Pierce Harris. All of which seems like plenty to moan about, but Rhona nonetheless gets little sympathy from many Emmerdale viewers, who simply cannot stand her!
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Marlon Dingle
Marlon Dingle arrived in Emmerdale in October 1996, and ever since then he has been dividing the show’s audience with his comical antics, ill-fated romantic endeavours and his generally emotional disposition. While there are Marlon fans out there, with plenty of people appreciating actor Mark Charnock’s portrayal of the often hapless Dingle, there are also legions of people who have simply had enough of Emmerdale’s whimpering, somewhat spineless chef, and would be happy to see the back of him.
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Paddy Kirk
Nicknamed ‘The Wet Vet’ by some who loathe him, Paddy Kirk’s character is described as a “loveable softy” on his profile on the ITV website. However, his softness is certainly not loved by everyone and many of the same people who cannot stand Marlon Dingle have a particular dislike for his mate Paddy. The pair are thick as thieves, with Paddy even getting Marlon’s name tattooed in a heart shape on his lower back! Their detractors would probably say they deserve each other.
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Alex Moss
The fact that Emmerdale’s writers only deemed Alex Moss fit for inclusion in the show for just over 18 months perhaps tells its own story, and the critical reception for the character played by Kurtis Stacey was broadly unforgiving. After arriving in April 2011 as a new farmhand at Butlers Farm, Alex became a confidant for Cameron Murray, who told Alex he had unintentionally murdered Carl King. However, Cameron became paranoid that Alex would let his secret slip and he beat him to death and buried his body on the ground of Home Farm. His demise was of little disappointment to many viewers, who described him variously as a character that the writers did not know what to do with, and “the most pointless, wooden male character the show has ever had”!
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Eli Dingle
Described by one disgruntled viewer as making his “terrible useless brother Moron [Marlon] seem like an Oscar winner”, Eli Dingle seems to have infuriated the Emmerdale audience with everything from the way he laughs, to his haircut, to his trademark catchphrase, “Blinding”. Played by BAFTA-nominated actor Joe Gilgun, Eli lasted just four years between 2006 and 2010, during which time his attempt to appeal as a loveable rogue did not land with everyone!
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Ethan Anderson
Appearing in Entertainment Daily’s list of Emmerdale’s most boring characters in 2022 was Ethan Anderson, who somehow managed to bore many viewers despite his life being seemingly set up for all manner of intriguing storylines. Ethan is a gay lawyer raised by a vicar, and yet his appearances are generally described as “dull”.
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Chas Dingle
Chas Dingle’s character came in for some hate in 2022 after she cheated on her husband Paddy Kirk with Al Chapman. Lucy Pargeter, who plays Chas in the soap, told the Irish Mirror that she was well aware of the dwindling reputation her character had among fans of the show. “People are really, really not liking them together and you have got the cheerleaders for Al and Chas,” Lucy told the newspaper. “But you’ve definitely got the absolute haters for Chas, and what she is doing to Paddy and the reasons behind what she is doing with Al. I hate what she’s doing. We were never gonna win people over to Al and Chas when Paddy was involved.”
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Brenda Walker
Perhaps the most stinging indictment of Brenda Walker’s character, among the many criticisms she receives from Emmerdale fans online, is that she went missing for months during the pandemic – and nobody watching the show really noticed!
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