Johnny Briggs, actor who played Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street for 30 years – obituary

Johnny Briggs, the actor who has died aged 85, was already a well-known face in films and on television when he made his debut in 1976 in ITV’s epic soap Coronation Street as the crafty Cockney wide boy Mike Baldwin.

Although Granada producers had made it a rule to use only artists unfamiliar to the viewing public, like Violet Carson (who played Ena Sharples), Briggs was an exception. Not only had he become a fixture on television and in films, he had also appeared on stage at the Royal Court Theatre in London, which was still regarded as a nursery for new talent.

Briggs believed he fitted in at Coronation Street “because I was playing a sort of outsider anyway. Being a Londoner, a factory boss, everyone expected Mike to be a bit flash,” he explained. “It probably added to the image rather than detracted from it.”

But his abiding passion was golf. Such was Briggs’s obsession with the game that his first wife remembered him missing the birth of his first child in 1965. “He couldn’t even be bothered to come to the hospital,” she said. “He was out on the course.”

Seven years older than the character he played, Briggs first appeared in Coronation Street in 1974 as a van driver, and was asked back two years later to play Mike Baldwin and to join the regular cast. He was offered a three-month contract, during which he was to have an on-screen affair with Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear).

His confrontations with his love rival Ken Barlow (played by William Roache) became a regular feature of the storyline, and observers believed there was something of Mike Baldwin in Briggs. The character had four marriages and countless affairs, including flings with Barlow’s wife and daughter.

When Ken Barlow was reunited with his wife Deirdre (Anne Kirkbride) following her affair with Baldwin, the announcement “Ken and Deirdre reunited. Ken 1 – Mike 0” was flashed up on the Old Trafford scoreboard during Manchester United’s game against Arsenal that evening.

Much ink was spilt in Fleet Street over the years chronicling Brigg’s personal life. In the mid-1990s, when he was 59, he had a six-month affair with a 21-year-old air hostess. In 2007, when he was 72, he was caught by a British tabloid “romping” with a prostitute in Thailand, and he went on to have a relationship with a make-up artist more than 40 years his junior.

Briggs left Coronation Street in 2006, after 30 years in the show. During his time at Granada he had developed a reputation as a “corpser” who laughed so much during recording that he was reprimanded not only by the director but by other members of the cast and occasionally by the crew.

John Ernest Briggs was born on September 5 1935 at Lavender Hill, Battersea, south London, the son of a master carpenter and the eldest of two children. Evacuated during the Second World War to Guildford, he later went to live with a family at Winsford in Cheshire, and sang as a boy soprano in the local church choir.

When he returned to London after the war, he lived at Colliers Wood and in 1947, aged 12, won a scholarship to the Italia Conti stage academy, enrolling alongside Nanette Newman, Millicent Martin and Anthony Newley.

Having immediately landed a role as a boy soprano with the Italian Opera Company in London, Johnny made his professional stage debut the same year and went on to appear in several operas including Tosca, Falstaff and Rigoletto.

On joining one company he was told by another boy that it was customary to greet visiting opera singers in their native language. Briggs confidently addressed the lead soprano with what he thought was a welcome, but she blanched and fled in tears. Later he discovered that he had actually been taught to say: “Why don’t you f--- off?” in perfect Italian.

When his voice broke in 1949 he appeared on stage with Audrey Hepburn in Sauce Tartare. After more opera parts, Briggs became a stage hand at the Windmill Theatre, and was later promoted to spotlight operator. But he found that his real talent lay in standing in the wings handing fans to the fan dancers.

In 1948 Briggs had appeared in his first film, Quartet, starring George Cole and scripted by Somerset Maugham. More work soon followed: in 1953 he played Skinny in Britain’s first X-rated film, Cosh Boy, featuring the starlet Joan Collins in her second film. “She was older than me when we were making the picture,” he recalled. “I never understood how she became six years younger than me later on.”

Having presented himself as a homosexual in order to avoid National Service – he failed, but the ruse led him to be saddled with the sobriquet Lana Turner – Briggs spent two years in the Royal Tank Regiment, as a driving instructor and then a gunner. His biggest problem was his size: at 5ft 6in Briggs was almost too small for the regulation uniform. There were no boots small enough for his size five feet, and he spent his time as a tank-driving instructor wearing slip-ons.

Discharged in the rank of sergeant, in 1955 Briggs returned from service in Germany to the news that his younger sister Barbara had died of a brain haemorrhage, and put his acting career in hold to be at home with his parents.

Making his stage comeback with the High Wycombe repertory company, Briggs played a range of roles in such stage favourites as Dial M For Murder, Boeing-Boeing, Wait Until Dark and Doctor In The House.

During the 1950s Briggs became a peripheral member of a group of hard-drinking actors led by Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole. “We used to drink in the Salisbury in St Martin’s Lane,” he remembered. “When it closed we’d go to the Kismet Club, and from there to one of the market pubs at Billingsgate for ‘breakfast’.” Briggs noted that while he drank halves of bitter, Harris and Burton were drinking double gins.

In 1960 he appeared with John Thaw and Judy Cornwell in Granada’s drama series The Younger Generation, and continued to be in demand on the big screen, taking roles in such films as Sink The Bismarck, Doctor in Love, Light Up the Sky, 633 Squadron, The Wild and the Willing, as well as comedies including The Bulldog Breed with Norman Wisdom, The Intelligence Men with Morecambe and Wise and three Carry On films.

During the 1960s his television roles became more frequent, with parts in Z Cars, Softly Softly, The Persuaders, Love Thy Neighbour, The Avengers, The Saint and Danger Man. For two years he played Det Sgt Russell in No Hiding Place, wearing a pair of 3½ inch lifts in his shoes.

After appearing in Crossroads as the taxi boss Clifford Leyton, he made his first appearance as Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street in October 1976.

Asked what he liked about his alter ego Baldwin, Briggs replied: “I like his approach to life, his approach to women. He doesn’t start affairs, he lets them come to him. If they don’t, then he’s really not at all bothered. He’s a very confident and basically a nice guy.”

In 1988 Briggs appeared in court on a drink-driving charge. He had hit another car on the motorway and later refused to take a breath test. In court he claimed he had driven home, and had been so upset by the incident that he had had a drink to calm his nerves. He subsequently admitted to having downed 10 measures of brandy, seven of port and a glass of red wine.

Briggs’s ghostwritten autobiography was published in 1998. Despite receiving more amorous fan mail than any other actor in the cast, Briggs claimed he had “no illusions about showbiz” and that he saw himself as a jobbing actor. “I go to work,” he said, “get the job done, get paid and go home.”

Following his retirement from Coronation Street in 2006, Briggs received the British Soap Award for Lifetime Achievement and was appointed MBE. He made a few subsequent appearances, in shows including Holby City.

Briggs, who suffered from seasonal affective disorder, spent much of his time playing golf, dividing his time between Florida and Somerset.

Johnny Briggs married, in 1961, Caroline Sinclair, with whom he had a son and a daughter. After his divorce in 1975 he married, secondly, Christine Allsop, a teacher, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. This marriage, too, was dissolved. His children survive him.

Johnny Briggs, born September 5 1935, died February 28 2021