Joking aside

CORRIE actor Craig Gazey has been happy to be lying in bed on screen over the past few weeks. He views his time in hospital, recovering from serious injuries after being hit by a car, as good for his character, Graeme Proctor, by showing a serious side to the joker.

“It was really good to test Graeme in a more serious manner,” says Gazey. “It makes him a more rounded character and is good for me as an actor to have more serious stuff to do.”

Graeme was a comic character when he first arrived in the Street, but having established himself, the producers are taking him in different directions. He’s even got himself a girlfriend, Tina.

Gazey was pushing the producers for Graeme to get serious. “I had lots of chats about what I wanted and they did listen to me,” he says.

“I just think you should see different dimensions of all the characters. So it’s not about me just being in comedy and nobody letting me do anything else.

“I’ve done a lot of other quite dark stuff, quite serious stuff. I wouldn’t call myself a comedy actor and I wouldn’t like to pigeonhole myself. So, I basically said I can do more.

“Not that I’m arrogant – come on. To believe in the character you have got to see all the different shades and colours and have different things happen.”

Gazey only came into the soap for eight episodes and in prison, not the street itself.

Viewers responded so well to his character that a month later the producers asked him back as a regular cast member.

“The character is very different now. I didn’t know what he was going to be like.

I came back and thought it could be a real sink-or-swim moment.

“There was quite a lot said about him.

There was a mixed response because he was quite edgy and didn’t know what he was going to be like. So I thought this could fall on its bottom or turn out to be quite good. And it was the latter.”

He had no idea on joining as a regular how Graeme would turn out. “He just materialised from the lines I got in the first couple of episodes that he was going to be a good character,” he says.

“It seemed he caught the nation’s heart instantly. I remember being out at a nightclub only three days after my first episode and people were going ‘Oh, it’s Graeme’.

“It’s hard to embed yourself in something like Coronation Street. To get in here ain’t easy. Now I’m immensely proud.”

AS a new film about Burke and Hare from American Werewolf In London director John Landis opens in cinemas, The Search For Burke And Hare reveals the gruesome story behind the pair’s bodysnatching activities.

They were two 19th Century Scottish serial killers who sold their victims’ bodies to Dr Robert Knox at Edinburgh Medical College, during a cadaver shortage.

Many times Knox’s students recognised the faces of those their professor was dissecting.

Landis’ new film stars Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis and Isla Fisher and has a comic slant. But, as the History channel investigation shows, their murders were deadly serious.

Actor David Hayman, another of the stars of the film, presents an examination of the grisliest of crimes, suggesting that the true body count may never be known, and that the cost of a life in Scotland’s past may have been little more than a few pennies.

FIVE goes back on the road with Eddie Stobart: Trucks and Trailers as a group of drivers heads to Belgium with a delivery of Formula One racing cars. While they are waiting for their priceless haul, one newbie driver cannot resist taking Michael Schumacher’s electric bike for a spin.

Elsewhere this week, a veteran driver volunteers to test out a new trailer, but ends up spending a long stint stuck in music festival traffic.

Meanwhile, the Stobart crew puts on a show at Truckfest, the highlight of every trucker’s calendar.