FORMER CHILD
FORMER Coronation Street child star Warren Jackson is pale and drawn as he appears to smoke drugs – unrecognisable as the angel-faced boy who played the young Nick Tilsley.
Warren, 34, claims he is finally getting his life back on track having spiralled into a sordid life of drink, drugs, and self harm after losing his job on the ITV soap at 16.
Two videos handed to the Sunday Mirror, understood to date from this year, show Warren in a squalid apartment holding a white “bong” believed to contain the deadly drug crystal meth.
The drug is highly addictive, causes psychosis and brain damage with heavy use, and is linked to anxiety and depression.
In one video the former actor drags on the pipe while holding a flame to a metal bowl attached to it.
Covered up in a hood, baseball cap and dark sunglasses despite being indoors, he drags hard on the tube before exhaling and talking into the camera – though it is not clear what he is trying to say.
The music of US boyband 3T plays in the background as Warren grins into the camera with his hands covered in plasters.
In a second video he is seen topless in a bedroom holding the same paraphernalia while attempting to heat the substance ready to smoke.
In a rambling reply when asked about the videos, Warren denies he was smoking drugs and bizarrely claims the footage was doctored by “friends” using computer technology to make it appear as though he is holding the pipe.
He admits he has no idea how such footage could be faked to show him so clearly smoking and talking.
But he insists: “I haven’t taken drugs for a long time, I’m clean now, so I don’t know how this has happened.
“They must’ve used computers to make me look as though I was smoking drugs, but I don’t know how.”
He admits that, at his lowest ebb, he smoked cocktails of drugs and would down a crate of beer a day.
But now he insists he has turned his life around for the sake of his nine-year-old son, who lives with his mum in the Manchester area but to whom Warren is determined to maintain access.
DARK
Telling how his life spiralled out of control, he says: “After Corrie I struggled to cope with things and life took a turn for the worse. I started drinking whisky and taking valium and self harming.
“I have been through some very dark times – I have smoked cocaine, mixtures of things, hashish mixed with other things – but I am clean now.
“I used to drink a crate of beer a day, but now it’s just four to six pints, and I’ve stopped the drugs – although I admit to liking the odd spliff or two.
“I haven’t been squeaky clean over the years but I’ve got to stay clean now for my son. I don’t want to lose him from my life.”
For the first 16 years of his life, Warren was known to millions of Corrie fans as Nick Tilsley, the first child of Brian Tilsley, played by Chris Quinten, 57, and wife Gail, played by Helen Worth, 64.
At the time the show was regularly pulling in 15 million viewers and a whole generation of fans grew up watching him act out Nick’s troubled childhood.
Warren continued as a regular star on the show until he was 16, when he took what he expected to be a short break to complete his GCSE exams.
However, he was axed and the character re-cast with heart-throb Adam Rickitt, 36. He was later told it was because bosses had wanted a hunkier actor for the role.
In 2004 Warren admitted his axing had come as a shock to him after a whole life in Weatherfield, having said goodbye to his on-screen mum expecting to be back on the cobbles within months.
He said: “I remember saying goodbye to Helen Worth and she said, ‘Stay in touch and see you next year’. She thought I’d be back, everyone thought I would. “I never dreamed they’d get rid of me the way they did.”
He said he was told by a reporter that he had lost the role because he was not good-looking enough.
He added: “It would have been better if they’d told me straight, because a reporter came round my door.
“They said I wouldn’t be coming back because I wasn’t sexy enough. That was a blow and a bit strange and it took me a good year to come to terms with it. Back then I was maybe a bit angry.”
Warren admits he tuned in to see his replacement, but was not convinced Adam was any “sexier”.
“I watched the first few,” he says. “I can remember thinking ‘Ooh, the hairdo’ and he was more beefed up – more muscles and everything.”
The character of Nick Tilsley remains one of Weatherfield’s most popular residents – now played by Ben Price, 43, the third actor to occupy the role.
But Warren’s bad experience has left him disillusioned with TV and he now says he would hate to see his son to follow him into a career on the small screen.
He adds: “The way I was dumped by Corrie really affected me. I would never want my son to be famous by being on television. Write a book or something – but TV ruins people for years.”
Since leaving the show Warren has lived abroad for many years in a variety of countries, including Spain and Holland where he worked in Amsterdam’s cannabis coffee bars and nightclubs.
Warren is the latest in a line of Coronation Street stars to struggle with drink and drugs. They include Kevin Kennedy, 53,who played Curly Watts and recently Michael Le Vell, 50, who plays Kevin Webster, admitted taking cocaine after being cleared of sex assault charges.