Lynda Day

Lynda Day runs the Junior Gazette like it's Fleet Street, not a school paper. She's ferociously ambitious, quick to snap, quicker to apologise never, and treats every deadline as a matter of life and death. Underneath the bossiness is a genuine belief that the work matters, even if the people around her sometimes don't seem to.

Julia Sawalha plays her without softening the edges, letting Lynda be genuinely difficult — impatient, controlling, often unfair — and trusts the audience to like her anyway. The writing gives her real competence to back up the ego, so her bossiness reads as earned confidence rather than a flaw waiting to be fixed.