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years at Bristol and was allowed to catch up with my essays during the holidays,” Bill remembered. “After Bristol I thought I’d better get a proper job and the only other thing I wanted to do was work in advertising. I put on a suit and worked at BBH in London as an account manager/director for six years, loving the open-minded creative individuals I worked with, many of whom are friends to this day. Then there was a year travelling round the world listening to the BBC World Service throughout. This had me toying with the idea of becoming a radio journalist, before I decided to return to advertising for two years – with Saatchi & Saatchi – by which time I had saved enough money to decide to put myself through drama school. I did a one-year, post-grad course at The Actors Company in Shoreditch, which was 40 hours a week squeezed into Thursday evenings and 9am to 10pm Friday to Sunday. This enabled me to do freelance advertising work during the week.”
Drama school was a tough schedule and life was initially tougher still in the real world of professional acting. “One of my first jobs was in
A Christmas Carol at Battersea Arts Centre, where we were paid £40 for three months’ work,” Bill recalled. “Three years later, I had started to pick up quite a bit of theatre rep work when Coronation Street came completely out of the blue. They were looking for a builder called Charlie Stubbs – a native Mancunian, in his mid-40s and with plenty of TV experience. I was 35, had never been to Manchester and had only done one TV role as a ‘copper’, where all I said was ‘STOP’! My agent had had someone else up for the part who had got very close, so they said they would see me on the off chance. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get it, so was relaxed in the audition, took quite a few risks and was extremely surprised to get the job.” Bizarrely, Bill’s first scene as Charlie Stubbs was an altercation with Johnny Briggs, the one who played factory owner Mike Baldwin.
Bill was brilliant as Charlie. He became the most hated male
character on TV. “Even in real life, when out and about, I had to keep my wits about me,” he said. Bill’s body language and facial expressions captured the character to perfection. “The key to acting, the bit that takes the time and work, is getting inside the character, in particular the character’s thoughts,” he says. “If you can get the character right, the face and body language take care of themselves.”
Two of the most dramatic Charlie Stubbs scenes were when he ripped the earring off barmaid Shelley’s ear and when he was murdered – battered over the head – by Tracy Barlow. Yet they tended to be the easiest to play. “Because of their importance to the storylines, the characters were so clearly defined,” he explained. “The hardest parts are
actually where the least happens, such as drinks and banter in the Rovers Return pub.” Another difficult area was filming scenes out of order. “I was once filmed breaking up with a girl before my character had even started going out with her,” he recalled.
It was Bill who eventually called time on Coronation Street, giving the producers 12 months’ notice. “I was secretly hoping for a big exit and wasn’t disappointed,” he commented. “Kate Ford (who still plays Tracy Barlow) was great to act with and we would often sit down for a cup of tea and mull things over.”
One would have thought – due to his success as Charlie Stubbs – that Bill was headhunted to play the role of James Barton in Emmerdale, where he was again murdered. Not
THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2017 –2018
FEATURE
Bill with Kate Ford who plays Tracy Barlow in Coronation Street
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