SOAP SPAT Corrie legend Bill Roache reveals secret feud with co-star after on-set incident meant they didn’t speak for TWO years
CORONATION Street legend Bill Roache has revealed his secret feud with a co-star which saw them not speak for TWO years.
The soap icon, 93, has played Ken Barlow since the ITV soap’s debut episode in 1960.
After working on the soap for 65 years, Bill certainly has some tea to spill which might come as a surprise to Coronation Street fans.
This includes an on-set incident in the 1970s which led to him not speaking to a co-star for two years.
Bill spilled the beans when he recently took part in An Audience With Coronation Street in Salford.
The actor’s secret feud was with the late Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner.
Addressing fans, he said: “I had a scene where she’d said something unkind to my wife, and I told her off.
“Pat said to the director, ‘I don’t think she’d take this from this young man…’
“She said she wanted to do something in the end, and the director said, ‘Yes, Pat, anything you want.’
“So Pat asked me to pause and she’d throw an ashtray at me. I said, ‘No, Pat, you know what you’ve done here, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s unprofessional.’
“We didn’t talk for two years.”
Bill then revealed how their feud made things very awkward on the Corrie set but one day they were suddenly friends again.
“Two years later, we’re standing together waiting to film a scene, still not talking and it was her birthday coming up,” the actor continued.
“She said, ‘Oh I suppose you’d better come to my party then.’ And we became good friends after that!”
Die-hard Corrie fans will remember that Pat played Elsie between 1960 and 1973.
She returned to the show in 1976 but left again in 1982.
Sadly she passed away just two years later at the age of 62 from lung cancer.