“I just wanted to clear that bit up!”

Hollyoaks spoilers follow.

Hollyoaks star Kieron Richardson has cleared up confusion over how his character Ste Hay survived this year’s autumn stunt.

Ste and his husband James Nightingale were both caught up in a car bomb explosion last month, which provided a huge cliffhanger ahead of the show’s one-year time jump.

When Hollyoaks returned for episodes set 12 months later, Ste woke up from a coma following a long recovery period. He was devastated to discover that James hadn’t survived.

Some fans branded Ste indestructible following his good fortune, wondering how he hadn’t died or suffered life-changing injuries in the blast.

Catching up with Digital Spy at the Inside Soap Awards this week, Kieron took the opportunity to clarify Ste’s latest lucky escape.

He laughed: “I just want to say, because I’ve seen so many messages about this from people saying: ‘How has he survived?’

“If you look back at the clip closely, James had his seat-belt on and Ste didn’t. When we actually shot the bomb going off in the car, first it goes ‘puff’ and then there’s the fireball.

“But the way it was edited, because we’ve only got 20 minutes to show the episodes now, you only saw the fireball.”

He continued: “So in our heads when we were doing it, we were like: ‘James has got the seat-belt on, Ste hasn’t’.

“So when the ‘puff’ went off, Ste jumped out and that’s how he survived. I just wanted to clear that bit up!”

The explosion drama marked the end of Gregory Finnegan’s nine-year stint as James, which came as part of Hollyoaks’ cast reduction for the new era.

Ela-May Demircan, who played Ste’s daughter Leah Barnes, also bowed out shortly after the time jump as her character went off to university in the US.

Reflecting on his on-screen family getting smaller, Kieron told us: “Obviously it’s naturally sad. We always knew going into this that we were going to lose so many characters.

“Yeah, you’re going to have to have your shocks, because you want the audience to be sat there like: ‘What? Oh my God!’

“And obviously it’s sad with Ela-May, but I’m guessing it’s a numbers thing where we can only have so many in, because we only have so many minutes and the situation that we’ve been in.

“The only thing I keep seeing at the moment is everyone talking about the show, but who knows what the future holds? Maybe one day – it’s soap, anyone can come back at any point. You just never know who could turn up next week.”

The Inside Soap Awards took place in London on Monday night and saw Hollyoaks star Isabelle Smith, who plays Frankie Osborne, triumph in the Best Newcomer category.

Hollyoaks airs on Mondays-Wednesdays with its Channel 4 streaming premiere at 7am, then an E4 broadcast the same night at 7pm. Full episodes are also released on YouTube a week after their Channel 4 release.