Corrie icon admits exit was sealed as producers | UK News

One of Coronation Street‘s longest-serving stars has revealed they had been virtually killed off 20 years in the past, and the writers had confirmed it with him at the time. Jack P. Shepherd, 37, who performs hairdresser David Platt in the long-running ITV cleaning soap, is presently celebrating 25 years on the cobbles. He first arrived in Weatherfield as the wayward son of Gail Platt (Helen Worth) in 2000, aged just 12 years outdated. However, talking on Saturday evening, September 20, as half of An Audience with Coronation Street live show at the Lowry Theatre in Salford, he revealed his tenure was truly fairly short, as he was set to be killed off around 2003.

On stage with host Sharon Marshall and his solid mates Patti Clare (who performs Mary Taylor), Jane Danson (Leanne Battersby), Jimmi Harkishin (Dev Alahan) and William Roache (Ken Barlow) at the Lowry Theatre in Salford The Celebrity Big Brother winner shared particulars of his proposed exit.

“They were going to kill me off because I’d done bad things, and it’s like anything, each character goes through bad scenarios and if they keep doing bad things, they have to get rid of them, don’t they? The soap gods get you.

“I found out at a writer’s meeting that they’d just killed me off. They’d just decided to,” he said.

Explaining “they’d worked out David’s exit storyline and were going to kill him off during his teenage years he revealed he was revived thanks to one of the soap’s most famous serial killers.

“What modified their minds was that I did a scene where I blamed Gail about Richard Hillman, and I believe the scene was usually written where David would lash out at his mum and storm upstairs, slam the door, like a typical teenage cleaning soap scene,” he said.

“I performed it a little in a different way, and I was just very matter-of-fact and was a bit more honest with what he truly believed and thought.

“And that’s when they went, ‘Oh, maybe he’s alright, and maybe there is a way back for his character. Maybe this lad’s quite good and we’ll try and keep hold of him.'”

Throughout his quarter of a century on Corrie, Jack’s character has been put through the wringer. He has spent time in younger offenders, watched his spouse die in his arms and been raped by a man he believed to be his buddy, amongst other hard-hitting storylines.

Thankfully, Jack’s real life is far calmer than his on-screen alter ego. In July, he married his fiancée, Hanni Treweek, in a romantic ceremony just over a 12 months after he proposed during a safari journey in Tanzania, Africa.