The illustrated Hello: Billy Corkhill

After an unexpected hiatus following the death of Malcolm last night, we're picking this feature up again tonight with Billy Corkhill.

You said you wouldn't go to prison... that teacher was 'avin' it away with my daughter.... you said you wouldn't go to prrrrisssson

Billy Corkhill was one of the Brookside greats, during the period when it was a soap opera which trusted its audience. The sequence where he and Sheila Grant negotiated their respective hang-ups on Otterspool Prom pulled off the impossible of making an unlikely relationship convincing and touching, and a lot of that was down to John McArdle's performance as Billy.

You remember Billy Corkhill:



It was probably for the best that he never came back to visit his brother Jimmy as Brookside declined into the home of the Millennium Arch and the sort of cartoon gangsters that the scriptwriters for Dick Tracy might have drawn the line at.

"Ah, but surely you're cheating by just dumping a bit of Brookside in here. Where's the music? Have you failed?" you cry.

Not at all. Do you fancy Billy Corkhill - or, at least, John McArdle - singing What's My Age Again? As part of a choir?



I bet you'd forgotten that All The Small Things ever happened, hadn't you?

[Part of the iluustrated Hello. Vince Hillaire next? Oh, jesus...]