A MAN OF MANY PARTS

Actor Ian Bartholomew is turning his portrayal of Coronation Street’s reviled wife abuser Geoff Metcalfe to good, with a new role, supporting charities helping the real-life Yasmeens

- Joanne Goodwin

March 28, 2018. Episode 9,415 of the world’s longest running soap opera, and there’s a new character strolling down Coronation Street.

It’s cheeky Geoff Metcalfe, dad of nice-but-a-little-dim Tim. Geoff thinks of himself as a bit of a ladies’ man and he’s got his eye on Audrey Roberts. He’s funny Geoff, silly Geoff, buying everyone-a-drink Geoff, Geoff the magician, Geoff the cheesy hospital radio DJ. It’s going to be a while till Geoff turns dark. And becomes one of Corrie’s greatest villains…

You may think you’ve seen Geoff before, or rather Ian Bartholomew, the actor who plays him, but not remember quite where or when. It could have been in one of his four Olivier Awards-nominated theatre roles, or in 2011 as Alfred P. Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Royal Exchange when he won the Manchester Evening News award for Best Supporting Actor, or when he took the title role in Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, receiving outstanding reviews. It might be from his catalogue of television work covering many of the most popular programmes of the past 40 years: Minder, The Professionals, The Darling Buds of May, Wycliffe, The Bill, New Tricks, Spooks, Heartbeat, Foyle’s War, Maigret… Perhaps you have passed him on the streets of Malpas where he has lived for 15 years, or in Anglesey, where he and his wife Loveday Ingram, the theatre director, like to spend their holiday time with their daughter and son.