Bill Tarmey (4 April 1941 – 9 November 2012)

Bill Tarmey the man who played lovable rogue Jack Duckworth died yesterday. To say he was a working class hero would be to under play the character and his significant to many men who had to endure Coronation Street. To many men he was the reason we did not jump out of windows or gorged our own eyes out.

We wanted him to get one over his wife Vera who constantly hen picked him and thwarted his latest money making scheme or his attempt to sire some nubile wench. The fact that he always got caught made us feel better that we were not the only one under the thumb that we had role models who were caught in the trap of domesticity and needed to break out.

In his trade mark broken glasses held together by elastoplast he was a metaphor of the feminisation of society and the role men had to play within this new paradigm. From being hunter gatherer to house husband in 6,000 years! Even when he had a great result the missus was always there to take away the glory and spend the money on net curtains or some other unnecessary item.

The beauty of his role was that even though he was scared of his wife played brilliantly by Elizabeth Dawn, he loved her and she him. What he found difficult was the role of being controlled when he wanted to be ‘one of the boys’ and have some fun. In the end he didn’t want to grow up.

Bill Tarmey was also a great night club singer and if things were different he could quite easily have been a major recording artist, but, the chips fell the way they did and he played one of the best male characters on TV. He leaves a wife and two children.

Coronation Street: 1984

Coronation Street – Goodbye Jack