Kim Tate

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Emmerdale character
Kim Tate
Portrayed by Claire King
Duration 1989-1999
First appearance November 1989
Last appearance 19 January 1999
Date of birth 19th January 1959
Status Married


Kimberly Jane 'Kim' Tate (née Barker, previously Marchant) was a fictional character on the ITV soap opera Emmerdale. She was played by Claire King.

Contents

[edit] Backstory

Kim Barker started out as Frank Tate's secretary. She had an affair with him while his wife Jean was dying of cancer, despite Frank being old enough to be her father. Frank's son Chris was also attracted to Kim although they eventually became bitter enemies. After Jean's death Frank and Kim married and they moved to Home Farm in late 1989. According to Claire King's autobiography Kim was originally going to be married to Chris, but the writers decided that Kim was mostly interested in the Tate money and would have 'cut out the middle man' by marrying Frank.[1]

[edit] Early Kim

Kim at first seemed to be a nice person who got on well with her stepdaughter Zoe and even Chris to begin with. She was also good friends with Chris's wife Kathy. This all changed in 1992 when it was discovered that Kim had been having an affair with Neil Kincaid. Frank made the discovery on Christmas Day and threw Kim out of the house. Kim's relationship with Neil didn't last very long afterwards.

After Kim and Frank separated in early 1993, she set up stables under her maiden name of Kim Barker. This however didn't last very long as the stables were destroyed in the plane crash a few months later killing many of her horses. After the plane crash, Frank and Kim put aside their differences and reunited again and they re-married in December 1994 however Zoe and Chris never trusted her again.

[edit] 'Superbitch' Kim

In 1995 Kim began another affair, this time with Dave Glover, the boyfriend of Kim's former friend Kathy (who was now divorced from Chris). This time Kim was much more ruthless about keeping the affair secret and trampled Kathy's brother Nick with her horse when he threatened to expose her. She also threatened Nick's daughter Alice. When Frank had a heart attack and was advised to take it easy, Kim encouraged him to sleep with her in the hope of inducing another heart attack. Kim became pregnant and wasn't sure who the father was. When Frank overheard Dave and Biff Fowler discussing the situation, he did indeed have another heart attack and ended up in hospital. He then had time to think and decided to pretend not to know about the affair while hiring a private detective to follow Kim and Dave before confronting his wife with all the evidence he needed. He offered her a million pounds to dump Dave and name Frank as the father and Kim accepted. The baby was named James Francis Tate.

However, after becoming attached to the baby, Kim resumed her relationship with Dave, who was now married to Kathy. They planned to run away together, but a fire broke out at Home Farm and David was killed saving baby James.

[edit] Frank's death

In 1997, Kim faked her own death and returned to shock Frank who had spent time in prison for her murder. Frank attacked her, causing another heart attack. She watched him die, saying "You're a dinosaur Frank, and you know what happened to them". When Frank died, she checked he was dead with her compact mirror, then redid her makeup. Chris blamed her for his death and swore revenge.

After Frank's will was read out, Kim inherited a half share of Home Farm and then started seeing Steve Marchant (who later became her husband) who also had a share in Home Farm.

[edit] Kathy's hit and run accident

In 1998, when Kim and her new husband Steve Marchant fell on ill times, they planned to gain some money by stealing a horse and selling it, after replacing it with an older horse in the hope that no-one would notice the difference.

Whilst driving the horse-box, however, Steve happened to run Kathy Glover over. Kim managed (after narrowly preventing her husband from finishing Kathy off in the hospital) to talk to Kathy while she was alone, concussed and vulnerable. She persuaded her that Steve had not stopped his vehicle when he had hit her to make her husband seem like the sole villain of the piece - even though she had helped to plan the thievery of the horse.

On the day of trial in January 1999, with the lawyers questioning Kathy's validity as a witness for Steve's hit-and-run crime, Kathy herself came to question how true Kim's words had been. For this, and numerous other crooked tricks, the police were soon on her trail.

[edit] Kim's departure

Needing to escape, Kim discovered that Chris had found the money from the robbery which Kim had buried in Frank's grave. She confronted Chris, tried to seduce him, and knocked him out savagely with a paperweight when he was not fooled. Then she confessed that she had indeed, as he speculated, killed his father; he had died of a heart attack while she looked on - in precisely the location Chris was now lying in. She left with her son in a helicopter. The pilot asked her if she was Kim Marchant, and with her final words on the show she replied, "No, Kim Tate". She has never been seen again. Kim is consequently one of the soap's few villains never to be punished for her crimes, or properly killed off.

[edit] The return of Kim Tate?

No-one has never seen or heard from her since she left, even though she sent flowers to Emmerdale when Seth Armstrong died in 2005. Fans of Kim Tate have always wanted her to return. It was rumoured in 2005 by The Sun that she was to return and clash with Sadie King at Home Farm but it never happened. It remains to be seen whether she will ever return to the show, as she is one of the most popular characters in the show's history.

[edit] See also


  1. ^ King, Claire, Confessions of a Bad Girl, John Blake Publishing, ISBN 1-84454-253-X
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The Tate family in Emmerdale