Birds Of A Feather welcomes an old friend back to the nest in the form of Martin Kemp.

The Spandau Ballet star was one of man-eater Dorien’s (Lesley Joseph) conquests earlier this year in an episode where she was seen in a clinch with his character Vince in the back of a hearse.

Martin is back for the comedy’s Christmas special, popping up as a bar owner in Morocco where the Birds have flown to in hopes of tracking down Tracey’s (Linda Robson) son Travis (Charlie Quirke), who has gone missing on his gap year.

Lesley said: “He’s such a silver fox, Martin and the way the storyline goes, it’s absolutely natural that he would be there.

Pauline Quirke, who plays Sharon, added: “He’s very funny because he plays it totally straight – Vince ain’t the brightest spark, but Martin plays it slightly bemused all the time.”

Linda said they had requested Martin to rejoin the cast: “When we went for the meeting before they started writing the script, they said ‘Are there any characters you’d like to bring back?’ Martin, he’s so lovely and everyone loved him in Birds.”

Despite being set in Morocco, the hour-long episode was actually filmed in Malta and the stars have been very secretive about details of the plot.

Pauline said: “We said to the writers, what we’d like is a caper, a good old-fashioned caper.”

Linda said: “I can’t tell you the ending, but it is quite Christmassy, although I’m not sure it’s happy.”

Pauline added: “No-one dies, we can say that.”

Birds Of A Feather airs on Saturday on ITV at 8pm.