THE SOAP STAR WHO THINKS EVEN HITLER WASN’T ALL BAD
DESPITE an illustrious career in television, Bill Roache has n ever b een far f r om controversy. He made memorable headlines when he claimed to have slept with 1,000 women during his youth, admitting he regularly cheated on his first wife Anna Cropper.
He also admitted to having a fling with Coronation Street costar Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner, but later dismissed it as a ‘one off’.
The star has made many outlandish statements during interviews, many based on his spiritual beliefs with the Pure Love Movement.
On life philosophy he has said: ‘We are love, love solves everything, love is everything.’
His comments on being ‘forgiving’ towards paedophiles chime with remarks he has made about Hitler. He said: ‘No one is naturally bad, everyone is inherently a very beautiful, spiritual being. Everybody, Hitler included.’
On Anders Breivik, he said: ‘If you want to get rid of that evil you don’t let him rot in prison. If we throw real love at him eventually he will realise what he did wasn’t right.’
At the end of the nineties Roache ended up bankrupt fol- lowing a libel battle with The Sun for calling him ‘boring Ken Barlow’. He won the case but was judged to have wasted court time with the law suit and was awarded only £50,000, the amount the paper had offered him to settle out of court. He was left with huge legal bills which he compounded with the decision to sue his lawyers over the case, landing him in up to £ 00,000 of debt.
Around the same time he also launched a board game called Libel, which he invented himself and which proved a spectacular failure.
Earlier this year it was revealed he ended his two-year relationship with TV weathergirl Emma Jesson, 44, so he could explore a ‘mystic message of love’ linked to his membership of Pure Love.
In what he calls his ‘search for truth’ he has dabbled in druidism, donned white robes at Stonehenge, and experimented with Buddhism.
Last week he took part in a psychic reading in the hopes of communicating with his two pet dogs live on TV. Appearing on This Morning he said he believed all people are telepathic and telepathy will be the means of communication in the future.