A look at the career of Roy Barraclough MBE

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A look at the career of Roy Barraclough MBE

Roy was born in Preston in 1935 – his mum worked in a mill and his dad was a professional footballer – playing for Fleetwood Town, Stockport County and Preston North End who also worked in his family’s monumental masons.  Roy was Philip and Flo’s only child and like more or less every family in that era they often visited the theatre.  When Roy was just six they went to see a production of The Desert Song and during the interval Roy pushed open a door marked ‘private’ which led to the backstage area giving him a glimpse of the chorus waiting in their costumes … he was hooked and he went straight home and made a toy theatre and took piano lessons.  

At the age of 14 he left school and started work as an apprentice draughtsman which allowed him to save up enough to buy his first theatre season ticket.  He also joined the local amateur dramatics society appearing alongside fellow amateur actress’ Susan Hanson who would later find fame as Miss Diane in Crossroads and Mavis Rogerson who would play Fred Gee’s wife in Coronation Street.  At the age of just 16 he was offered a week’s paid work at the Preston Royal Hippodrome playing a schoolboy alongside the star, John Barron – who some of you may remember as CJ in the Reggie Perrin TV series.  Roy earnt £4 and he loved every minute.

At night and at weekends he took part in as many productions as he could.  By day he was still working as a draughtsman and carrying on his studies - however it wasn’t something he enjoyed very much.  All he dreamed about was leaving to work in show business.  In 1962 he finally made some progress.  He landed a four-month contract as a pianist and comedian in a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight followed by a stint playing piano at one of Preston’s theatres (he accompanied a young Eileen Derbyshire who’d later played Emily Bishop) and his first professional pantomime – playing one of the broker’s men in Cinderella at the Blackburn Palace alongside ‘Pinder’s Twenty Performing Poodles’ and ‘Jacko the Educated Monkey’.  He finally got offered an elusive contract with a repertory theatre company in Huddersfield.  Rep theatres, we don’t have them these days, had a company of actors who had to turn their hands to everything – sometimes directing, sometimes acting, occasionally assisting back stage, and in Roy’s case, sometimes playing the piano.  You also did a different play each week – performing one at night and rehearsing the next week’s one during the day.  

The theatre was owned and run by an eccentric actress called Nita Valerie (she had been cast as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street but couldn’t remember the lines so was replaced by Vi Carson) who had a certain standing in Huddersfield.  They were always running out of money so everyone had to help out – and Nita sometimes took time off to appear in other theatres around the country and then guest stars would be brought in.  In his first year, 1964, Roy appeared in almost every play they did so he was given Christmas off.  He’d only been home a day when Nita rang and asked him to rush back – the guest star of the pantomime, Hylda Baker, had fallen out with the musical director and sacked him.  So Roy was required to pull together a little band and conduct – which he did.  Do you remember those twenty performing poodles back in Blackburn?  Well, he got one of those – an act called ‘Freda and her Singing Poodle’ in fact.  Freda played the organ whilst the poodle sat on top and howled along.  He got a drummer – and he played piano.   Must have been quite a thing!  Anyway, Hylda was a bit … difficult but Roy soon won her over and the panto was a success.  Nita – incidentally was cast as Ena Sharples in Coronation St until they found out just how eccentric she was – they let her go and brought in Violet Carson before the first episode went out.  They were doing Jane Eyre one week and Nita and Roy were watching the opening scenes from the wings together.  Nita thought it was very boring so she grabbed a wig and shawl and ran on, throwing Mr Rochester to the floor and screaming like a banshee.  When she came off, leaving the actors a little shell-shocked, she muttered to Roy ‘Well, that’s livened it up’.  She was right!  

After a year or so there he moved on to Stoke where he joined the rep along with Robert Powell and Ben Kingsley and from there he went to Oldham joining the company based at the Coliseum Theatre.  That was 1966.

Now, in between he had done a few TV roles.  Notably, in 1965 when he made his first appearance on Coronation Street playing a tour guide who conducted a group of regulars on a boat trip around the Blue John Mines.  They built the cave and lake set in the studio and Roy had to punt this boat around the water – he was terrified of tipping it over.  Sitting in it were the actors playing Annie, Emily, Stan, Hilda, Uncle Albert, Minnie and Elsie.  Luckily he kept them dry – in fact he played three other roles before Alec Gilroy - in 1967 he played an electric guitar salesman, the man who sold Stan Ogden his window cleaning round in 1968 and in 1970, a man who danced with a drunken Hilda Ogden!  

But, back to Oldham.  It was the same thing – in a play at night whilst rehearsing a play during the day.  Roy used to say that it wasn’t learning the script that he found difficult, it was forgetting the one you’d just done.  It was a skill which came into its own on Corrie of course, which is basically a repertory company on TV.  In his years at Oldham he acted in over 70 productions, he occasionally directed too.  Now, Roy always had a mischievous sense of humour and he got bored very quickly so he soon developed a reputation for messing about – he would change the lines, he would hide costumes … he did all kinds of things whether he was in the show, directing it or just going to watch the others when he had a week off.  For example, he went to see his fellow actors in ‘Murder on the Nile’ for which the set was a boat deck with lots of whicker chairs and tables set out on it.  He went to see the cast backstage before the show – these included Barbara Knox.  Just as he went to take his seat in the audience he whispered to Barbara that he had placed a fart cushion on one of the chairs.  He hadn’t - but he enjoyed seeing all the cast nervously touch each chair as they went to suit down – just in case.  Whilst at Oldham he started to do more TV including, in 1968, a Granada series called The War of Darkie Pilbeam and starring Trevor Bannister and written by Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street.  Roy played a black marketer who dressed as a nun to smuggle booze!

In 1969 he was asked to audition for a soap opera to be made by a new ITV company, Yorkshire.  He had to go to London and whilst getting the train at Piccadilly he bumped into an old friend, Kathy Staff.  It turned out that she was auditioning for the same show – in fact they were auditioning for husband and wife.  They got the parts and played Harry and Ruth Everitt, a bit of a rough couple with two children, living in run-down flats in Whitby.  The twice-weekly series, Castle Haven, which was only shown in Yorkshire and Scotland and the other ITV networks wouldn’t air it as they felt it was competition for Coronation Street.  The also suffered a problem when the Emley Moor transmitter near Huddersfield fell down in a storm – well, that meant that the TV signal wasn’t reaching the whole of Yorkshire so the TV company had to hire an airship to fly round and round beaming down the pictures.  Roy was quite affronted when the tea in the studio canteen went up a penny a cup to help pay for it.  

After two years it finished and Kevin Laffan turned his attentions to a new project – he created Emmerdale Farm.  Roy was now becoming established as a television actor and roles in shows as diverse as Z Cars, Nearest and Dearest, The Lovers, Queenie’s Castle starring Diana Dors, Hadleigh, Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width, Nearest and Dearest with his old friend Hylda Baker, plus his first film, Mr Horatio Knibbles, all followed.  (It was about a girl with an imaginary pet rabbit!).  Alongside this Roy was also doing as many theatre shows and radio plays as he could.  He appeared in over 100 radio plays in fact.

In 1972 he landed a TV role which brought him his first taste of fame.  Pardon My Genie was a childen’s series made by Thames Television about an ironmonger, Mr Cobbledick, who finds a mischievous genie in a watering can.  Roy was cast as Cobbledick, Hugh Paddick played the genie (he was later replaced by Arthur White, David Jason’s brother) and over two years they made 26 episodes in which Roy’s character invariably befell some nasty fate – falling in rivers, being thrown out of vehicles, having horses jump over him – all kinds of comedy stunts.  Such was its success that Roy returned to Oldham to play his very first pantomime dame in a script he wrote himself. 

Around the same time he was working at Yorkshire TV and having lunch in the canteen when a producer sat next to him and made an appeal.  Could he help them out of a hole?  They’d signed a new comedian, who wasn’t used to rehearsing and indeed, wouldn’t rehearse, for a new sketch show.  The actor they’d employed to work with him had walked out because he couldn’t cope with the comedian’s indiscipline.  Well, Roy said he would give it a go.  The comedian was Les Dawson and the pair got on like a house on fire.  They were from similar backgrounds – Northern, working class and they’d worked hard to get where they were.  They also made each other laugh – and that was the key to their relationship.  At first Roy played roles alongside Les in the sketches, the Syd Lawrence Orchestra did some musical interludes, Les would do some stand up and then they’d have special guests such as Olivia Newton-John, Shirley Bassey, Roy Orbison and so on.  

One day they were chatting to the studio audience as some cameras were being moved and they started to take off two women working in a mill – both their mothers had done so – and they sort of did it along the lines of the great Norman Evans, a comedian they’d both loved.  The audience loved it and it became a regular thing.  At the end of that series the producer asked if they’d like to do it on screen and so Cissie and Ada were born.  They played them on TV, radio, stage, pantomime and in commercials – remember the ‘naughty but nice’ cake commercials they did?  In fact they filmed over 1,000 sketches both for ITV and the BBC between 1974 and Les’s death in 1993 – the nation loved the conversations between the very common Ada Shufflebottom and the posher Cissie Braithwaite.  They were great friends off screen too and you can see, if you watch any of the sketches they did, that really they’re just trying to make each other laugh – there’s a chemistry that can’t be faked.  Roy was touring in a musical version of Sherlock Holmes and was appearing in Blackpool.  Les, who lived in Lytham, came to see it and the next day they met to discuss an offer from ITV to revive Cissie and Ada and give them their own series.  They agreed that they’d say yes and that they’d ring ITV the next day to start the ball rolling.  Well, the next day Roy was driving to the theatre when he heard on the car radio that Les had died.  Their partnership of 20 years was over.

During that time Roy also did many other things – on TV Billy Liar, The Galton and Simpson Playhouse series, George and Mildred, Rising Damp, The Bounder, Bergerac, Lost Empires, Return of the Antelope and many more.  Film appearances included Car Trouble with Julie Walters and The Slipper and the Rose with Richard Chamberlain and Dame Edith Evans.  In 1975 he also made several appearances as Rita’s agent in Coronation Street.  At that time he held the record for playing more Corrie characters than any other actor.  Anyway, this agent, Alec Gilroy, would be a part Roy would re-visit a decade later but before we get 
there …

Theatre work continued throughout the 80s.  He played Herbie in the musical Gypsy, took the lead in his favourite play Death of a Salesman and toured in a farce with the star of the Profumo affair – Mandy Rice-Davies.  Roy recalled walking past a theatre and seeing an elderly couple studying the poster, the man suggesting they book.  “You’re not going anywhere near her,” says the wife. “She brought down the government.  Think what she’ll do to you!” Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?  He also regularly appeared on radio playing Teddy Tranter, the town clerk, in the very popular The Random Jottings of Hinge and Bracket and on stage in dozens of pantomimes.

In 1986 he was asked to revive the character of Alec Gilroy.  The writers were planning to set fire to the Rovers’ Return and they wanted a bar location to use while that story was taking place so Alec was introduced as the owner of the Graffiti Club opposite.  After the fire Bet took over the Rovers and when the brewery decided to sell up Alec lent her the money to buy it and they were married.  The wedding dress worn by Julie Goodyear was worked on for months – it was enormous, she could have quite happily jumped off the Granada roof and parachuted to safety, and it had thousands of sequins, pearls and beads on it.  But they’d forgotten poor Roy – his trousers were so long that they had to wrap gaffer tape around his ankles.  For the next six years Roy played the scheming landlord of Britain’s most famous pub.  For years he’d been recognised by people but being in Coronation Street took that up a level.  He always cursed the fact that he was famous – Roy felt that actors were observers of people and it was difficult to observe if everyone was looking at him.  For that reason he was never entirely comfortable being in Corrie – each year the producers had a hard job convincing him to sign another contract.  In fact, he would usually only sign six monthly ones and he always insisted on time off to appear in theatre.  Hence Alec’s cruise contracts so that they could explain his absences from behind the bar.  

It wasn’t long before Roy had itchy feet and in 1992 he left the show.  Alec took up a position as a cruise director and Bet felt that she couldn’t leave Weatherfield.  In reality he starred at Bolton and then on tour with a play written for him called Feed about a comedian, he did panto of course, that tour of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Powell, TV appearances included Cadfael with Derek Jacobi, a comedy series Mother’s Ruin with Dora Bryan, he played John Prescot on radio and he popped back to Coronation Street when Alec attempted to prevent grand-daughter Vicky marrying Steve McDonald.  They filmed the wedding scenes, or aborted wedding scenes I should say, at Dukinfield Town Hall.  There was a huge press turn-out and large crowds gathered to see Roy back on set.  Indeed, it was so bad that they had to abandon all the exterior scenes and re-write the episode so that everything was done inside.  The press were trying to get pictures – and they went to great lengths to get what they needed.  One lady offered to let a photographer into her house and to hang out of the bedroom window – forgetting that her husband was working nights and so fast asleep.  He got quite a fright to wake up and find the News of the World in his bedroom!  That led to an idea.  ITV were thrilled with his return and came up with the idea of making a film on a cruise ship – it turned out to be the QE2 – showing Alec as cruise director.  The story developed – Raquel and Curly would marry and go on the cruise as their honeymoon and Rita and Mavis would also be there.  The whole project was top secret and no one outside this small cast knew much about it.  It was filmed during a real cruise and the passengers only found out about it when they boarded.  You can imagine poor Betty Driver and her sister’s surprise when they got into their cabin and heard the news!  Their annual holiday was now on a Corrie film set.  

On the back of the video Roy was lured back to the main show.  Julie Goodyear had now left so Roy returned to run a travel agency with Deirdre as his assistant (it led to her meeting John the fake pilot!).  Again, he insisted on regular time out to do other things and these included a theatrical first – playing two parts in one play.  These two roles were brother and sister in a play written for him called A Different Way Home.  Roy won many awards for the play which he opened at Oldham and later took on a national tour.  On Coronation Street the Duckworths were running the Rovers but the producers wanted Alec back behind the bar so he joined Jack and Vera in ownership and then bought them out.  By now they were making 4 episodes a week and Roy found it too much.  Alec Gilroy’s last episode was transmitted on December 30th, 1998.  It was his 851st episode as Alec, but of course he’d played other roles so Roy actually appeared altogether in 855 episodes of Coronation Street in all over a period of 33 years.

So it was no more Coronation Street and no more pantomimes.  Roy decided to retire.  The first thing he did was make a personal appearance at the British Isles Show in Toronto in the following spring.  He was mobbed and it happened that his final Corrie appearance aired during the visit.  He was awarded a Royal Television Society award for his years playing Alec, he won two Manchester Evening News Awards – best actor on television and for best actor on stage.  Quite a double.  And he won the Encore Variety Star of the Year in London.  He appeared in Casualty, did a footballing series called Bostock’s Cup, appeared alongside Diana Rigg in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, Peak Practice, Barbara and returned to Oldham to appear on stage in Staircase and the national tour of the musical The Boy Friend.  

Over the next few years he cut down but not too much – a series of A Thing Called Love, two series of sketch show Revolver, guest appearances in Doctors, Holby City and Heartbeat, he joined with The League of Gentlemen for the Blackpool-set thriller Funland and he cropped up as a man after Nora Batty’s … well, wrinkled stockings … in Last of the Summer Wine reuniting him with Kathy Staff, friend, neighbour and fellow patron of Willow Wood.  On stage he starred in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Royal Exchange, Spring and Port Wine at Leeds alongside Chloe Newsome who had played Alec’s grand-daughter Vicky, and who always, incidentally called him ‘granddad’ in real life.   He also made an appearance on the Basil Brush Show as Father Christmas, someone he would play quite a lot over the next few years.

In 2005 he was asked to play Santa in a lavish stage musical at Southampton.  It was a big success and he starred in at for the next few years – in Birmingham, Liverpool and back in Southampton again with a whole host of co-stars including Gary Wilmot, Robin Cousins, Anita Dobson, Stephen Mulhearn and Susie Blake. It was during the first run that he also found out he’d been awarded the MBE. 
By 2009 he was only interested in things which would be made around here (he liked to be home at night) so TV work included All The Small Things for the BBC in which he played a vicar and which was filmed in Bolton.  He was very convincing!  One day he was having a cup of tea between scenes when a woman ran in to the church they were filming at and seeing him in his dog collar asked if she could arrange a wedding.  He explained that he couldn’t do so which she took as something of a slight.  It was all resolved in the end.  Mind you, whenever he was on board a cruise ship – which he did a lot – passengers would often come up and speak to him as if he was the cruise director asking what shows were on and so forth.    He also appeared in two series’ of Last Tango in Halifax and a Christmas ghost story The Tractate Middoth which was filmed at Cheetham’s Library in Manchester.   He was lured away on a tour in 2010 to celebrate Coronation Street’s 50th birthday.  They produced a theatre show which replayed all the major stories from the last half century very much with tongue in cheek and Roy narrated the whole thing.  It was during that run that he celebrated his 50th year working in show business.

In 2016 he clocked up 56 years in the business with his last appearance – as Mr Grainger in a tribute to the comedy series Are You Being Served? filmed at Media City in Salford.  And that was that – so let’s finish by listening to one of those wonderful Cissie and Ada sketches.

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Glenda Young

Author of gritty, family saga novels with Headline

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