Everything about the show is always related to him in some way. Who decided he is the "face" of Hollyoaks.

The character bores me to tears. He has ruined John Paul McQueen, Amy Barnes was axed for his development, he hangs on the success of Brendan Brady and is put with two horrid characters Sinead O'Connor (axed now I know) and Scott Drinkwell which doesn't help.

I'm sure many of you will disagree lol!

He's an scummy druggie chav and an absolute horrid character. Can't believe we have to see him slobbering all over Harry soon. It's a shame they've gone this route, because Kieron is a very capable actor, but this dross has made Ste painful to watch.

I agree, although I hated Amy anyway and was glad to see the back of her. I've never got the fuss about Ste on any level, he's mostly been a pretty vile character. Kieron is a decent enough actor but people go on about him like he's Daniel Day Lewis or something.

He's gone backwards rather than forwards as a character since he's shacked up with equally Scummy Sinead & gone straight. For years he's been saying hes gay & constantly has relationship troubles. Hollyoaks only wed JP & Ste so they could claim 'the first soap to have a gay wedding' & giving him HIV sounded like a good idea but it lasted for all of 5 seconds. Now we have Harry lusting after him, why?! I honestly do not see the attraction to this horrid character.

I personally think Kieron's a great actor, but have been unhappy with the direction of Ste for a while.

Most people who are fed up with Ste, seem to be because they hate the storylines he's in now. If Ste had some better storylines coming up with a proper follow through it could very well change many peoples opinions again in his favour!!

I suspect he's shoved at the front of the show constantly because he's got quite a big noisy fandom on twitter - they are the main ones who did the multi-voting at last year's BSAs and got the Best Soap award for them. So Kirkwood is trying to keep them happy I imagine.

Poor old Ste, he used to be a great character. The troubled teen, the abuse storyline with Amy, the struggling single Dad, the friendship with Justin, the relationship with Brendan - all riveting stuff that made great use of Kieron's talents. The last decent stuff he had was his Mum's death, and then helping Tony through the early stages of the cancer.

Then it all went wrong. He was doomed the moment he was stuck with Sinead/JP. But to be fair, every character is a total mess now.

He is ok in Hollyoaks terms but can you see him in anything else? He will never leave unless he has fianicial secruity, he isn't daft.

He's been offered other things I think. He just wasn't allowed time off to do them. So who knows?

I agree. The writing for Ste is dreadful. Its as if the writers think Ste's some sort of side show freak. The latest with Sinead and Harry is really bad. I disagree with the popular opinion that pairing up Ste up with JP caused this mess. The big knock on that pairing was that it lacked chemistry. I watch other soaps and having couples that lack chemistry is fairly common. Never have seen that dealt with in this way. The writing for Ste is so above and beyond what was necessary to fix one storyline that wasn't working.

Kieron is a talented guy but Ste is AWFUL. It's like because of the "Stendan" stuff, he can now get away with anything and we're supposed to forget anything bad Ste did before (abusing Amy, lying that Leah had cancer ...) or since (cheating on John Paul, robbing the Hutch to feed his drug addiction ...) Not to mention being shoehorned in with the awful Lomaxes, who are quite bad enough on their own

While I can't speak for all LGBT people, and I'm happy for anyone who's taken something positive from Ste's character, seeing him held up as a progressive icon does grind my gears as he reinforces a lot of negative ideas about gay men (promiscuous, abuse drugs, don't practice safe sex, etc.)

Ste is horrible, but I adore everything about Kieron. Such a shame.

I think he could do a decent job in something else, whether he'll ever leave or be axed is another thing. I mean being in Oaks seems to have a certain stigma attached to it, not that many people have done well elsewhere after it, so who knows. I think he's good enough to have success elsewhere, but not Oscar worthy or whatnot.

I think he would be good in a drama.

I think Kieron Richardson is a decent actor and comes across as a nice person in interviews. I don't like the direction they have taken Ste in but that could be said for all the characters at the moment.

not meaning to sound like a hipster but I have always hated Ste, before it was cool

Jop is so hipster she hated Ste before he was even cast.

Does he not have HIV anymore, then? Has he been magically cured?

Actually, I could imagine that happening in Hollyoaks!
Not the same thing, of course, (in real life anyway) but I'll never forget Sasha Valentine being cured of being a drug addict over the course of about one week's episodes! They gave her bad skin to go with the addiction and that too magically cleared up in a week.
I've never forgotten that, all these years later! lol

To be fair it seems cool to like him. Being over accepting of gay people seems to be "retro."

Just treat everyone the same!

Ste on paper is a great character.

However the show is ruining all of it's characters, not just Ste. I only watch it through habit and hope that it won't continue down the route it's going. Characters change for their storylines, not the other way around which is what I hate, and don't get me started on the way the writers treat relationships.

Also, look at Minnie Cabs! I know soaps are supposed to have dramatic licence but Maxine creates a business in 3 days and pretty much scraps it 2 days in.

The episode where Ste and JP went for HIV tests was a brilliant episode. However they should have stayed together and gone through everything together.

Not really heard much about that recently so who knows - or he'll collapse out of no-where one day.

Dating a confused closeted young man at college just seems so wrong.

He is a married man with a drug addiction, child out of wedlock and has HIV.

Why would Harry be interested?

Agree. I can't stand him, he is so dull! He seems to be involved in every story. I disliked the Brendan/Ste romance. Brendan deserved better than him.

Ste's character development was doing fine up to where he was with Doug and they were running their own business. Since then they just seem to be going backwards in time regressing him to a tearaway teen again.

What a waste.

There are plenty of dramatic storylines that a more matured Ste could have been involved in

I agree.

He hasn't been onscreen much for 3 weeks. It has been a great break.