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Although the Granada sitcom The Brothers McGregor ran for four series and twenty-six episodes, few people watching at the time, or remembering the programme since, realise that it was a spin-off from Coronation Street. Indeed very little publicity was given to this fact on the programme's launch in 1985, possibly so as to avoid viewers prejudging what the programme would be like. The Brothers McGregor was an ITV sitcom set in Liverpool. It was seen by some as a spin off from the hugely popular Coronation Street as it’s two main characters had originally appeared in the soap for one episode in May 1982. Transmitted on Monday evenings from 16th February to 23rd March 1987 at 8.00pm except for Television South and Channel Television where transmissions ran on Thursdays from 19th February to 26th March at 7.30pm. Both Whitchurch and Barber went on to greater successes, the former appearing in The Bill for several years followed by the regular role of Tyler in My Hero, while Barber appeared in the smash-hit movie The Full Monty but remains best known to television viewers as Denzil in Only Fools and Horses.urn:lcp:brothersmcgregor0000well:epub:93e0afff-46b0-4f1f-beba-80f1d8c83fd5 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier brothersmcgregor0000well Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1fk3bz94 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0586068945 Whether it's celebrating people, remembering a place long forgotten or opening the Echo archives to mark a special anniversary, Days Gone By will be an essential read. Signing up is free and it only takes a minute for you to get the best stories, sent straight to your inbox.

When one of his 1982 scripts included the Liverpool brothers Wesley and Cyril McGregor attending Eddie Yeats’s engagement party, Stevenson and his fellow Coronation Street scriptwriter Julian Roach spotted the potential for a spin-off. The result was the sitcom The Brothers McGregor, which starred Paul Barber and Philip Whitchurch as the half-brothers running a second-hand car dealership, and ran for four series (1985-88). We eventually came to the conclusion that, if Emily Bishop was to stay in the Street, Ernie had to die,” Stevenson told the author Daran Little. “It did not seem fair to send her away when she [the actor Eileen Derbyshire] did not want to leave the show. The death of Ernie Bishop was to save Emily Bishop.” John Stevenson and Julian Roach shared the writing duties between them, Podmore was also the executive producer and Bernard Thompson produced all twenty-six episodes. Later, he and Roach scripted Dead Ernest (1982), set in heaven, where a football pools winner ( Andrew Sachs) finds himself after being hit in the eye by a champagne cork. On his own, he devised and wrote Mother’s Ruin (1994), starring Roy Barraclough running a health food shop with his domineering mother, a gin-soaked former child film star played by Dora Bryan. John Stevenson was taken with his creations, as were fellow-writer Julian Roach and Coronation Street executive producer Bill Podmore and a suggestion was made to Granada Television Managing Director David Plowright that the two brothers would be worthy of a sitcom of their own.Transmitted on Thursday evenings from 3rd April to 8th May 1986 at 8.30pm except for Granada Television where transmission took place at 9.00pm.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-05-07 16:01:10 Boxid IA40110422 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Having created the character of Raquel, Stevenson was responsible for the programme’s first two-hander – an episode featuring only two actors – when Raquel (Sarah Lancashire) returned in 2000 to tell her former husband Curly Watts (Kevin Kennedy) that she had given birth to his baby and was marrying someone else. Stevenson was born in Manchester, to Hughina (nee Chappelow), a library assistant, and John, an electrician. He attended Manchester grammar school and graduated in economics from the London School of Economics. After working as a journalist on the Oldham Chronicle (1958-64), he became showbusiness reporter and northern theatre critic for the Daily Mail, based in Manchester. Stevenson’s first two marriages, to Barbara Sutcliffe in 1957 and Sheila McGregor in 1977, ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Myra (nee Davies), whom he married in 1985, their daughters, Frances, Alex and Caroline, and Anna and Andrew, the children of his first marriage.

The first episode of the seven-part comedy series aired on September 4, 1985 and instantly grabbed the attention of viewers. The 1978 shooting was the first violent death of any character since Coronation Street had begun 18 years earlier – and met with uproar from viewers, who bombarded the switchboard at Granada Television, which made the ITV soap. Other dramas from Stevenson’s pen included Ken Barlow’s doorstep confrontation with Mike Baldwin after discovering his wife Deirdre’s affair, and Don Brennan dying after driving Mike’s MG Midget at the factory boss and crashing into a viaduct.