Speaking to Digital Spy and other media, actor Mathurin explained the reason behind Charles and Manpreet’s recent rift.

“I think the rocky patch has been brooding for a while,” he said, “mainly because there’s been so many different dynamics coming in and disrupting the relationship over the last year – with Charles’ father and his mother, and Charles not always taking Manpreet’s advice, and also being busy with work.

“I think it did come to a head when Charles proposed to Manpreet recently. It was a shock to him because he didn’t realise that. He thought that everything was fine. He didn’t realise that Manpreet was actually not really happy with what’s going on between them at the moment. So we’ll see if it can be mended.”

Mathurin spoke about what he thinks the underlying issues are in his character’s relationship with Manpreet, who previously left him at the altar.

He said: “There’s always been a case in whatever storyline it was, that Manpreet would give Charles advice and he wouldn’t take it. He thinks she’s either interfering or always against him, so he’ll do the opposite and then in the end it works out that actually if he’d listened to Manpreet in the first place it would have been fine.

“He’s just trying to please everybody and sometimes he feels that he overcompensates, especially with his mother and he expects Manpreet to understand that, really.”

Charles is also currently involved in another storyline involving his son, with the vicar set to report Ethan to the police after finding out that he fled the scene of the serious car accident that he and Nicky Miligan were in, leaving Nicky for dead.