Val Pollard

Valerie "Val" Pollard (also Lambert) is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Emmerdale, played by Charlie Hardwick. She made her first screen appearance in the episodes broadcast on 1 February 2004. Val was introduced as the sister of established character Diane Sugden (Elizabeth Estensen). She later married Eric Pollard (Chris Chittell). Hardwick took a three-month break from Emmerdale to appear in a play and the character left on 10 February 2012. Val returned in June 2012 and was surprised to learn that Eric had begun in a relationship with Brenda Walker (Lesley Dunlop). She moved into Diane's pub after her marriage breakdown and helped to run it while Diane was away visiting her daughter.

In 2014, Val was told that she was HIV positive after a holiday fling while she was in Portugal. In 2015, it was announced that Hardwick had quit the soap. Val was killed off on 6 August 2015 in the highly publicised "Summer Fate" storyline, which saw a helicopter crash into the village. She made several appearances afterwards as a ghost to Eric and on a videotape describing her final wishes. Her final on-screen appearance aired on 31 August 2015. She later appeared as a ghost in Robert Sugden's (Ryan Hawley) dream on 25 December 2017. For her portrayal of Val, Hardwick won the award for Best Comedy Performance at the 2006 British Soap Awards.