Corrie: Roy Cropper (David Neilson)

[faceless]

[faceless]

I secretly made Roy Cropper autistic to stop him being axed
By Sue Crawford
28/10/2009
mirror.co.uk

After 14 years, colourful eccentric Roy Cropper may be a Coronation Street institution... but he started out on the cobbles as a proper creepy weirdo. He was only signed up for six episodes at first and actor David Neilson has his wife Jane to thank for extending his soap shelf life.

David, who arrived in Weatherfield in 1995, says: “Roy was a psychopath. He was stalking Deirdre and was a bit scary. It’s nice to play psychos but they don’t stay around too long. My wife is a special needs teacher and she worked with people with autism. She said Roy could have Asperger’s syndrome, making him socially inept, rather than menacing. Nobody really knew what Asperger’s was back in 1995, so it’s my wife I owe it to. It’s never mentioned in the story though and it shouldn’t be – Roy is a human being, and a label doesn’t help him. But I think he’s got it. It gives him reasons for his behaviour and gives me something to play. I enjoy idiosyncrasies in people and Roy is full of them.”

He has added many touches to Roy over the years, including his shopping bag which belonged to David’s mother Phyllis, who died just before he got the Corrie role.

David says: “That bag went round Loughborough market for many years! It will be 30 years old now. My mother died just before I joined the show so I was chucking stuff out and thought it would be good for Roy. He was always knocking on Deirdre’s door, asking if she needed a bit of shopping and initially they gave me a carrier bag. But you see guys standing at bus stops with bags like that and I thought I’d introduce it. It’s also very handy to carry my scripts round in! Roy’s key on the piece of knicker elastic attached to the bag was also my mother’s. We fastened it on to the bag for her, because she kept locking herself out. She was forever calling out the police or the glazier to get her back in and they’d have to break the window.”

David, 60, landed the role of Roy when he was in his mid-40s after spending the previous 20 years as a successful, but relatively anonymous, jobbing actor. As a result he found the overnight fame hard to deal with. “It was a shock,” he admits. “Occasionally I would be on television in something and someone would recognise me as an actor, but this was different. If you are in someone’s living room three times a week you become a member of the family, so I was surprised at first.”

By nature a private man who rarely gives interviews, David moved to Barcelona in 2002 to escape the attention. “I need to get away from Roy and be myself and they don’t know Roy in Barcelona,” he explains. “If I’m in Spain for a few days I forget what I do for a living, which is the important thing. It means when I come back and someone shouts ‘Roy’, for a moment I forget they’re actually talking to me. And it’s only a couple of hours on the plane so I can commute to Manchester easily enough. Another reason we moved was for excitement. I like to do different things and it’s been good to learn a language and get into a different culture. Our son Daniel had left for university and we were in Bristol in a big house and we thought, ‘What shall we do?’”

Quite a lot, as it turned out. David has recently completed an Open University degree, is studying for an Open University diploma in Spanish and hopes to take two months out at some point to travel across South America. “And I’m still – even at my age – trying to learn the guitar,” he smiles. David grew up in Loughborough, Leics. His father Nicholas died when he was 10 and his mother worked nights in an old people’s home, as well as raising her three sons. David left school at 15 and began work as a gas fitter, developing a passion for drama after seeing classic 1960s British films such as Billy Liar, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and A Taste of Honey.

“They were working-class kitchen-sink dramas about escape and that was something I wanted to do,” David recalls. “I didn’t want to be a gas fitter and I didn’t want to stay in Loughborough. Those films made me feel there was a place for a working-class, Northern actor.”

After six years as a gas fitter he moved to London, studying drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He worked in the theatre for four years before landing his first TV role in Z Cars. He went on to appear in dozens of TV shows, even including a brief appearance in rival soap EastEnders in the early 1990s. “I was a character called Mr Webster trying to buy Nick Cotton’s house. And I was brilliant,” he laughs. “I was only in it for a couple of episodes. Those people... they just didn’t see it.”

It is in Corrie, though, where he has made his mark. Running Roy’s Rolls cafe with his transsexual wife Hayley, the kind-hearted couple have become two of the show’s most popular characters. So much so it is Roy and Hayley who feature alongside Becky McDonald in a one-off DVD, Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday, which sees the trio swap Weatherfield for a wedding in Transylvania. Co-starring Benidorm’s Siobhan Finneran and Early Doors’ John Henshaw as Verity and Glen, the groom’s brash aunt and uncle, there’s an immediate personality clash with Roy and Hayley.

David says: “Roy doesn’t want to go but Frankie Baldwin is marrying a footballer who plays in Romania and Roy and Hayley get invited to the wedding – and also to house-sit while they are on honeymoon. Becky comes out to join them and it’s very funny. Most of it boils down to Roy trying to stop everyone having fun. They go to see Dracula’s castle but he hates that it’s not really Dracula’s castle and he gets irritated when Glen dresses up as Dracula.”

David is also slap bang in the middle of Corrie’s biggest storyline of the year – the unmasking of killer boss Tony Gordon. When Tony has a heart attack outside his Underworld factory later this week, Roy finds him. Fearing his end is imminent, Tony unburdens himself. First, he confesses to smoking out the bats Roy tried to protect on Tony’s site... before revealing that he killed Liam.

David says: “Roy forgave Tony for the bats. He was touched that Tony felt so badly about it he confessed as he lay dying. Then just as Tony confesses to killing Liam he has another heart attack and the doctors rush in. Roy’s left wondering if he heard correctly and not knowing if he lives or dies. Roy spends a lot of time worrying about what he thinks he’s heard.”

Relaxed and friendly, David is a naturally happy man, with a ready smile and a determination to get the most out of life. In other words, he’s nothing like Roy. “My wife would say I am like him!” he laughs. “I can be in a world of my own. And I don’t like disorder – I like to know where my car keys are. I’m my own man, too, although I think I have slightly more social skills than Roy. At times he’s almost impossible. I wouldn’t like to live next door to Roy. But he’s a very honourable man. He has to do what he feels is the correct thing. I don’t normally do pride, but if I left Coronation Street tomorrow I’d know I’ve helped create someone long-lasting, like Curly Watts, Eddie Yeats or Reg Holdsworth, memorable characters and always will be. I love him – join the Church of Roy, that’s what I say!”

ROY'S ROLE

1995 Disconcerts Deirdre Rachid by interfering in her business

1997 Becomes Gail Platt's partner at Jim's Cafe and changes the name to Roy's Rolls

1998 Begins a romance with Hayley Patterson, learns she is a transsexual and follows her to Amsterdam when she runs away

1999 Reopens Roy's Rolls on Victoria Street and "marries" Hayley in the cafe (it's not legally recognised but Hayley changes her name to Cropper by deed poll)

2001 He and Hayley become foster parents to Wayne Hayes. Roy goes on the run with Wayne to save him from abusive stepdad Is drugged by evil Tracy Barlow and tricked into

2003 staying the night in her bed. Agrees to buy her baby believing himself to be its dad and marries her to gain rights to his child

2004 Pays Tracy £20,000 for her daughter, whom he names Patience. Breaks down when Tracy admits he is not the baby's father and demands her return. Divorces Tracy

2007 Encourages Hayley to follow her dream to perform charity work in Africa 2008 Invites Becky Granger (right) to move into the cafe flat

2009 Agrees to give Becky away at her wedding to Steve McDonald and finds out Tony Gordon is a killer

Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday DVD is out now, £19.99. Next Corrie episode is tonight at 7.30pm, ITV1.

[SpursFan1902]

Ok, so his wife is a transexual? I obviously haven't gotten all the way thru the bios on line...

[SpursFan1902]

Ok, so I thought this guy was just a harmless guy with Aspergers and now I think he is kinda creepy. The shot of him standing out in the rain was quite unnerving.

[faceless]

you've not seen Tony Gordon in full on evil mode though - Roy's his ultimate nemesis! Star Wars wasn't even this good haha

[pirtybirdy]

Roy is like that pain in the ass neighbor you dread to ever have move next door to you. He'll go on and on about shit that is not that big a deal, like the fact that your grass is a little tall for his liking, or that your porch light is too bright. I wish evil Tony would sew Roy's lips shut before being defeated by the force of good.

[SpursFan1902]

I am pretty excited about this story line now. I was getting sort of bored with it. Roy going on and on...I can't wait to see Tony in full evil mode...muwahaha...

[faceless]

Coronation Street: Drown and out
By Tony Stewart
November 14, 2009
mirror.co.uk

Murderous Tony 'Flash' Gordon must think he's invincible because he's just too cocky by far. When the police turn up at the factory on Monday and arrest him over threats to Roy and Hayley, and for his part in the death of Liam Connor, the Scot is so supercilious that it's a wonder they don't give him a kick up the sporran.

"There's obviously been some horrific mix up," he smirks, "but I'll humour you... I murdered Born To Run in the shower this morning. Is that what you're thinking of?"
Perhaps he's right to be smug. Who would believe Roy's wild claim that Tony made a deathbed confession?

Roy's an eccentric figure of ridicule with unhealthy obsessions for old bats, transsexuals - which, in "man-wife" Hayley's case, could be the same thing - and the locomotive industry. Yep, he's a trainspotting weirdo. He also happens to be the Street's most honourable man, which is why viewers relate to such convincing performances by David Neilson as the oddball. The police believe Roy, and so does Maria when she finds out her fiancé has been questioned. And she's so terrified she flees the house.

With his world falling apart as he loses Maria and baby Liam, a furious Tony sets out for revenge on Roy. Not since that fateful night in March 2003 when Richard Hillman drove the Platts into the canal has Weatherfield known such unadulterated horror.

Again, it's at the canal where an unhinged Tony confronts Roy with a bloodied knife in his hand and a hint he's already dealt with Hayley. "I killed Liam," Tony tells Roy again. "But I never killed with my own hands in cold blood before tonight." As they fight and plunge into the canal, there's only going to be one outcome. And it's not a happy one...

----------------------

Come on Roy!

[TheCaptain]

[faceless]

[faceless]

Soap star backs Labour candidate
28th November 2009

A soap star has swapped Coronation Street for campaigning with a Labour candidate, it has been revealed. David Neilson, who plays Roy in the popular soap opera, has given his backing to Claudia Beamish's campaign to become an MP. Ms Beamish is fighting to win the Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale constituency currently held by Tory shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell.

[SpursFan1902]

So, does that make him a good guy or a bad guy?

[faceless]

I think it makes him a guy who likes the gingers!

He lives in Spain apparently, so why he'd care about that particular Scottish constituency is a mystery.

[SpursFan1902]

That seems to be his and Roy's MO....no one is sure why either one does the things they do!