Coronation Street legend Charles Lawson has slammed a number of the ITV soap’s former bosses in his new autobiography.
The Northern Irish actor, 65, played Jim McDonald regularly for 11 years from 1989, before returning intermittently for guest stints between 2003 and 2018.
Jim was the husband of the iconic Liz (Beverley Callard), and father to their sons Steve (Simon Gregson) and Andy (Nicholas Cochrane).
The pair also had a daughter, Katie, who died shortly after she was born.
Now, in his new autobiography That’s Life, So It Is, Charles has criticised his time on the long-running soap and spoke of his desperation to leave in 1999.
Speaking of one former producer, he said that he had ‘neither respect or anything for the man.’
‘I was cajoled into another contract with this lot of amateurs at GTV (Granada Television), but even worse, I had to swallow my pride and stamp on my principles’ he said.
‘For months now, I have been going through the motions of turning up and doing Jim McDonald, and hating every moment of it and believe it or believe it not, on more than one occasions seriously considering taking the lift to the fourth floor, walking into Jane Macnaught’s (producer from 1999-2002) office, and telling her to shove it up their a***s.’
He continued by saying this was his ‘biggest mistake.’
Charles adds that he ‘hated every moment’ of playing the beloved character, and that he was shocked when Macnaught extended his contract by another year to give him a sufficient exit story.
‘I was deeply hurt and angry’ he said.
‘After a ten-year commitment of hard work, and what I considered to be a valuable contribution, I was to be offered what amounted to a fourteen-thousand-pound wage cut, which would escalate, by way of also losing my per diem, to approximately twenty thousand.’
He also notes that Kevin Webster star Michael Le Vell had encouraged him not to take a pay cut, especially since he was on the brink of bankruptcy at the time.
Jim was written out when he was charged with the manslaughter of gangster and drug dealer Jez Quigley (Lee Boardman).
His latest story in 2018 saw him return with a huge shock for Liz – Katie was still alive.
In a horrifying twist, it later transpired that the woman was actually his much younger girlfriend, and the pair had concocted the story to scam his family out of cash.
