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As Dennis Tanner in the original cast of Coronation Street, the actor Philip Lowrie, who has died aged 88, portrayed a character newly released from borstal and seeking to make something of his life – while living in the shadow of his past. “In those streets, there is always a bad ’un, a wrong ’un – and he was the wrong ’un,” said the TV soap’s creator, Tony Warren, of Dennis.
Lowrie was introduced to the serial in episode one, broadcast live on 9 December 1960, alongside Pat Phoenix as his mother, the tempestuous Elsie, who accused him of stealing two shillings (10p) from her purse. “You stooped to goin’ in a lady’s handbag,” she says. “Just listen to it,” he responds. “A lady. Is that what you crack on you are these days?”
The drama continued off screen when a woman slapped Lowrie across the face as he and Phoenix were making a personal appearance at a cinema. “That’s for being so bloody cheeky to your mother,” shouted his assailant.
Lowrie and Kenneth Farrington were both screen-tested with Phoenix for the role of Dennis. Although Lowrie landed it, the part of Billy Walker – son of Jack and Annie Walker, who ran the Rovers Return – was specially written for Farrington.
Dennis was seen going through a string of jobs, as a sales rep, warehouse labourer, taxi driver, hair stylist, auctioneer, builder’s labourer and bookie, but his true love was show business. He was a compere, singer and assistant manager at the Orinoco Club, and also worked as a talent scout.
Lowrie’s character was given extra screen time when a seven-month actors’ strike, running from 1961 to 1962, meant that only 13 cast members on long-term contracts could appear in Coronation Street. Suddenly, these regulars were supplemented by Dennis’s own cast of animals hired to perform in his club – snakes, sea lions, pigeons, dogs and a chimp called Cheetah.
The actor then left the programme to satisfy his thirst for performing on stage, but returned in 1963 after 13 months away. He was subsequently allowed two six-week breaks a year to appear in theatre plays, but he finally walked out on his Street role in 1968, giving up a £250-a-week TV salary for just £20 a week in repertory theatre. He complained that playing Dennis – who married Jenny Sutton (Mitzi Rogers) and moved to Bristol – no longer presented him with a challenge and the character had not been allowed to grow up, remaining a jack the lad as he approached the age of 30.
Forty-three years later, in 2011, Lowrie returned to Coronation Street. After being discovered at a soup kitchen on becoming homeless, Dennis wooed and married Rita Sullivan, played by Barbara Knox, who had appeared in a 1964 episode when Dennis hired Rita as an exotic dancer at the Orinoco Club. In 2014, he ditched her for Gloria Price (Sue Johnston), then tried to return to Rita, but was given the boot, and Lowrie left the soap for good. Six years later, Rita was sent Dennis’s ashes and the news that he had died after suffering from dementia.
Born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, Philip was the son of Bertha (nee Collins) and Philip Sr, a paper mill supervisor. As a child, he had a stammer that was remedied through elocution classes, and he enjoyed appearing in plays at Stand grammar school. He then trained at Rada alongside Christine Hargreaves, who was to play Christine Hardman in Coronation Street from episode two.
Rep theatre followed before he appeared on the West End stage as Willie Bosworth in the John Vari play Farewell, Farewell, Eugene (Garrick theatre, 1959), alongside Margaret Rutherford and Peggy Mount, and as Karl Schill in the Friedrich Dürrenmatt tragicomedy The Visit (Royalty theatre, 1960), directed by Peter Brook and starring the American acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
Lowrie made his TV debut in the Allan Prior play A Young Affair (1958). During breaks from Coronation Street, his stage roles included a farm labourer in a Royal Court production of Edward Bond’s first play, The Pope’s Wedding (1962), and Claudio in Measure for Measure at the Ludlow festival (1967). “I used to return to the Street with a fresh enthusiasm,” he said.
On leaving the soap, he showed his passion for acting in front of live audiences by taking an astonishing number of parts in regional theatres over the next few decades. He had title roles in Romeo and Juliet (Ludlow festival, 1969) and The Boy Friend (Liverpool Playhouse, 1970), performed the classics at the Bristol Old Vic (1969-70 and 1980-81), the Chichester festival (1973 and 1990) and the Greenwich theatre (1974-75), and particularly enjoyed his stints as a member of the companies at the Belgrade theatre in Coventry (1968-88) and at Perth theatre (1968-92). One Perth newspaper critic wrote of Lowrie that he “can always be relied on to dig deeper into a character”. He was back in the West End for a year (2004-05) as Major Metcalf in The Mousetrap (St Martin’s theatre).
Throughout this, Lowrie continued to pop up on television. He played a French captain in War and Peace (1973) and Nigel Quinn in the cold war thriller Rules of Engagement (1989). However, he was most prominent in sitcoms, as Billy Hawkes, one of the singing trio – alongside Maria Aitken and Simon Williams – in Company and Co (1980) and Mr Watson in Andy Capp (1988), a version of the newspaper cartoons.
He also appeared in Victoria Wood’s eponymous 1989 series, played various characters in her 1992 special Victoria Wood’s All Day Breakfast and was seen as a TV warm-up artist in her acclaimed feature-length drama Pat and Margaret (1994).
Following his second run in Coronation Street, Lowrie continued to act in theatre with roles such as Klever in The Case of The Frightened Lady (2018) and Eric in The Lady Vanishes (2019), both touring productions.
