Monday 4 October 2010

The Stone Cladding Man - Who Was He Before?

Quite a lot of Corrie performers over the years have played more than one role - usually beginning as bit-parts, characters who flitted through a plot, appearing in only a couple of episodes.

According to his autobiography, The Importance Of Being Percy, Bill Waddington was four different "bit part" characters, before becoming Percy Sugden in 1983. He'd first appeared in the show in the late 1960s, and was at No 3, where Percy would later lodge, playing the best man at Emily Bishop's "wedding" to bigamist Arnold Swain, in 1980.

Another Corrie legend, Jean Alexander, had briefly appeared as the landlady of the woman who had kidnapped baby Christopher Hewitt in 1962 before becoming Hilda in 1964.

There's a lengthy list, but here's a nice easy question for you.

It's 1989. Percy is outraged to discover the workman putting up the Duckworths' stone cladding blasting out Roachford's Cuddly Toy on his radio, and gives him a proper ticking off.

"That wireless is a public nuisance!" rants Percy.

The actor who played the workman had notably played somebody else in The Street years before - his reign was brief but dramatic.

Can you name the actor and the character he once played?

2 comments:

Shuffler said...

Actor Sydney Livingstone - he played Roy Thornley, who seduced young Gail Potter at Sylvia's Separates and nearly got her involved in divorce proceedings when his wife found out. He also played a character called Bob Skelton in a couple of episodes a few years earlier.

Drew said...

Brilliant - Roy Thornley was the man we were looking for... he finally ran off with Sylvia Matthews, the lovely owner of the Separates shop... The two deserved each other!

Well done!