"We asked our customers who they wanted to see most and the ladies went wild for Ricky, so we are delighted that he will be making an appearance at the club tonight," said Mark Bowden, operations director at Club Sanuk.

"Ricky is one of the hottest males in Hollyoaks and has thousands of adoring fans. He will be meeting and greeting fans and we will make sure that he has a legendary night out to remember.

"Ricky oozes charm and sex appeal and we know he will be loads of fun, with a great personality and charisma. It's a great honour to welcome this superstar of the small screen to our club and entertain our members, who will be thrilled to get a rare chance of seeing one of their much loved TV heroes up close and personal."

Ricky was born in Oldham. His father Harry Whittle was in the RAF, which involved travelling to different RAF bases around the world, so Ricky never settled in one country for longer than three years.

A keen sportsman, he excelled in various sports, representing his country at youth level in football, rugby, American football and athletics.

After being scouted by both Arsenal and Celtic football clubs, an injury forced him to pursue a law degree with criminology at Southampton University for four years, in case of injury in the future.

Here he began modelling, becoming the face of a Reebok campaign in 2000.
After a successful audition and recall for the lead character in Sky One's Dream Team, Ricky left university to pursue an acting career.

After two action-packed seasons as Dream Team's "bad boy" Ryan Naysmith, Ricky appeared as a guest character on BBC One's Holby City, where he played his first gay character, David Richards.

Ricky has been voted one of the sexiest hunks on British TV and appears in the 2007 and 2008 Hollyoaks Hunks calenders.