Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Heckled as I had a stroke on stage
Corrie’s Charlie health scare
TV star Charlie Lawson has told how he was heckled when he had a stroke on stage.
The Coronation Street actor, 60, recalled the terrifying moment his vision went blue during a performance in Edinburgh last year.
To make matters worse, his partner Debbie, who realised something was wrong, heard people in the crowd ridicule the actor. Some likened him to Tommy Cooper – the comic whose death on stage in 1984 was broadcast live on TV.
Fermanagh-born Charlie, who plays Jim Mcdonald in the ITV soap, has since recovered from his health scare.
He told Christine Bleakley on ITV’S Lorraine: “Some witty you-know-what about two rows in front of [Debbie] said, ‘We’ve got another Tommy Cooper here’.
“Fortunately that wasn’t the case. [Debbie] raced down and got to the dressing room. By that time I had been taken off stage. I knew something was wrong.” Speaking about the moment he had the stroke, Charlie said: “All of a sudden I was completely unaware.
“I went deaf, everybody went blue and I didn’t know where I was, I had no idea.”
Charlie was taken to hospital and told he had suffered a mini-stroke.
He said: “I was cool after 20 minutes, I took two shows off and then did another 75.”
Urging the public to heed anything unusual about their bodies, Charlie said:
LORRAINE ITV YESTERDAY
“I thought I was indestructible, like the constitution of a short-horned steer, and then all of a sudden bang. I’m very lucky, I’m 100% fit and well.
“Don’t ignore any signs you may have previously had.
“If you ain’t careful, you’ll go bang, and you might not make it through. Or make it through in a bad way.
“I’ve got good alarm bells and I now respect my life and my way of life a lot more than I did before. I listen now.”