Casualty guest star Joe McGann has now played six roles on the BBC1 medical drama

Actor Joe McGann is the guest star on Saturday's Casualty playing a headteacher training for a triathlon who falls ill at the gym. But this isn't the first time that the 61-year-old star has turned up as a patient in the emergency department.

McGann has previously made Casualty appearances on five other occasions, his association with the BBC1 medical drama actually dating back to 1989 when he was cast as Bobby Masters, a builder who'd spilt hot bitumen on himself.

Since that time, he's featured as Greg Flowers in 2002, as Martin White in 2006, as Abe in both 2009 and 2010 and now as Joe Fields in the episode showing on 28 September. Surely this has to be a record? And, more importantly, why doesn't show stalwart Charlie Fairhead now recognise him?

Joe McGann first came to prominence in the BBC1 police drama Rockcliffe's Babies before taking on the role of Charlie Burrows in the hit ITV sitcom The Upper Hand.

In more recent years, he appeared as series regular Alex Wells in ITV's soap opera/mystery drama Night and Day and had guest appearances on Doctors, Midsomer Murders and My Family.

Soap fans can also expect to see him later this year on C4's Hollyoaks, where he'll be playing Dr Edward Hutchinson, estranged father of the soap's longest-serving character Tony Hutchinson.

Speaking about his new Hollyoaks role, McGann said recently: “I’m so looking forward to joining the cast of Hollyoaks. It’s such a great team on both sides of the camera, and I hope to fit in. My mum is really proud to have a surgeon in the family.”