Peter Armitage(1939-2018)

Being illegitimate, he had an unsettled childhood due to his mother not being around much during the first 10 years of his life. Consequently he was brought up by an aunt. Eventually he met his father, a German named Karl, when he was 28. After leaving school, he was apprenticed for 5 years to a Yorkshire firm that built diesel engines. In 1960, he joined the Merchant Navy with a dream of seeing the world but all he saw was the engine room. After 4 years, he settled in London where his first job was with a crew digging the London Victoria tube line tunnel. Relaxing in a folk club, he got talking to a man putting on plays with an amateur group, and did an audition, resulting in him getting a part which led him to be in the last 15 in a drama school in Loughton, Essex. After 3 years, he got steady work in the theatre and television including the series Lucky Feller (1975). Soon after, he went to Australia where he spent 2 years touring on a motorbike and busking with his guitar before returning to England, but all his agent could get him was a TV ad for Yellow Pages which was seen by Granada producers who thought him right for the part of Bill Webster in Coronation Street (1960).