Coronation Street star forsakes stardom in a TV soap for making award-winning cheese | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV
Sean Wilson swapped cobbles for cheese (Image: )
You recognisee him at once, of course. Sean Wilson played Coronation Street’s Martin Platt for twenty years, when the ITV soap was at its peak. “Even my own father called me Martin!” laughs Sean, 57, who swapped the cobbles for cookbooks and artisan cheese in the Noughties.
He had a good run as the long-suffering husband of Gail, a woman rarely separated from her own personal raincloud.
“Helen Worth is a lovely lady but I don’t know if the viewing public ever took to Gail,” Sean tells me with a broad grin. “I used to get asked ‘How have you lasted so long with her?’ So Helen did a great job.”
Martin was also the lover of Sally Webster, not to mention nurse Rebecca Hopkins and, controversially in 2005, teenager Katy Harris, played by Lucy-Jo Hudson.
That memory still hurts.
“She was sixteen, Martin was 37 and the producers said they wanted it to go further. I said, ‘I’m not happy with that. Why do it to me? I gave you my heart and my soul and this is what I get back?’
“I thought that was the time to get my coat and leave, so my future was in my hands.”
Platt? Splat.
Gail (Helen Worth) and Martin (Image: ITV)
As a teenager in Ashton-under-Lyne, Sean was rarely at home.
“I was always up early in the morning, I was up and out,” he recalls. “I had a milk round and I worked in the local market, on a fruit and veg stall to start with.
“I was out playing football, I captained football teams, I was in swimming galas…”
He was more “out, out” than Micky Flanagan. Why?
“I was the eldest child and had a stepfather, so home life wasn’t as good as it should be. I spent a lot of my time away from the house.”
He shrugs and adds, “But that’s life. You’re not born into a fairy story.”
His comprehensive school opened doors for him.
“I had a great drama teacher, Brian Johnson, an ex-actor who knew how to coax urban kids into creative arts. In my O Level year, we did auditions using…
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