Coronation Street’s Bill Roache, 92, avoids being declared bankrupt

Coronation Street star William Roache today avoided being declared bankrupt over half a million pounds wanted by the taxman.

The actor, who is best known for playing Ken Barlow, invested in a business venture in the Cayman Islands which HMRC claims was a tax avoidance scheme – with an average investment of £1.75million across 288 high-earners.

In March, the 92-year-old was told he had three months to pay off nearly £550,000 or be declared bankrupt by the High Court.

But lawyers acting for HMRC said they were dismissing the case against Mr Roache, with only £1,129.20 to be paid in legal costs.

Judge Nicholas Briggs told the High Court: ‘I shall dismiss the application with costs.’

Mr Roache, whose property portfolio includes a £900,000 house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, did not attend the hearing.

He began working on the set of Coronation Street when it first aired on December 9, 1960, and is the highest earning member of the drama, earning a reported £250,000 a year.

The actor holds the Guinness World Record for the longest serving TV soap star in the world, and was made an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours list in December 2021 for his services to drama and charity

His financial problems date back to the 1990s when he ended up bankrupt after suing The Sun for libel for calling him ‘boring Ken Barlow’.

Mr Roache won the case but was judged to have wasted court time with the lawsuit and was awarded only £50,000 – the amount that the paper had offered him to settle out of court.

The Coronation Street star was left with huge legal bills which he compounded with the decision to sue his lawyers over the case, landing him in up to £600,000 of debt.

He landed his role as Ken at the age of 28, before – unbeknownst to him – he would be hit by the death of two daughters, a fling with a co-star that would lead to the breakdown of his marriage, and financial woes to last more than three decades.

Not unlike his character, who developed a reputation as a ladies’ man, Roache admitted he cheated on his first wife – TV actress Anna Cropper – because of his huge sex drive.

Roache claimed to have bedded more than 1,000 women and blamed the breakdown of his first marriage on his inability to stop cheating.

The star admitted to a fling with fellow Coronation Street star Patsy Phoenix – who played Elsie Tanner from 1960 to 1984 – claiming the affair was a ‘one-off’ after Phoenix invited the star back to her flat. ‘She invited me round […] and we had a few drinks, then one thing led to another,’ said Roache. Phoenix died of lung cancer in 1986, having smoked 60 cigarettes a day.

During his second marriage to his late wife Sarah, who he married in 1978, Roache had many children, living to see both his spouse and two daughters tragically die.

His baby Edwina died from pneumonia aged 18 months in 1983, before his daughter Vanya passed away at the age of 50 in 2018 after battling liver failure.

In an interview at the time, Roache revealed he had devastatingly got involved in a car crash while rushing to see Vanya in hospital, meaning he missed his final chance to see his child before her death. Roache’s second wife Sarah died of natural causes in 2009.

The star was even arrested at his Cheshire home in 2013 before being found not guilty of two counts of rape and four counts of incident assault in 2014.

At the time, past and present cast members claimed Roache had been the victim of a cruel ‘celebrity witchhunt’ – rushing to celebrate his acquittal and slamming the ‘wasteful’ and ‘nonsense’ decision to prosecute him.

Roache then paid a visit to the ‘Circle of Love’, the mystical spiritual sect he turned to for support throughout the rape trial. The actor was joined by his daughter Verity on the trip to the holistic centre in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester.

He was shockingly declared bankrupt in April 1999 – before his creditors estimated he had unpaid debts of £600,000 two years later.

More than a decade later in 2012, Roache joined a tax-avoidance scheme, becoming a ‘designated member’ of Twofold First Services LLP, owned by a company registered in the Cayman Islands.

It was not confirmed how much Roache paid into the scheme, but he was one of 288 members who entered it, putting in an average of £1.75million. The scheme involved claiming tax relief from artificial losses of a land-owning business.

A tribunal went on to rule in favour of HMRC, which successfully concluded that Twofold was a ‘tax avoidance arrangement’ – branded ‘abusive and artificial’ by the Treasury.

And Roache’s financial woes have not been the only thing keeping him up at night. The star was shockingly arrested at his home in 2013, before being found not guilty by a jury of two counts of rape and four counts of indecent assault following a trial at Preston Crown Court in 2014.

His love life has also been tumultuous – having endured a divorce in 1976 to his wife of more than a decade, Anna Cropper, following allegations of his infidelity. Roache went on to marry his beloved wife Sarah in 1978, before she passed away years later in 2009.

Despite being the highest paid member of Coronation Street, Roache has lived in his Cheshire home for the past forty years.

The house, built in the 1950s, was designed by Roache’s beloved late wife Sarah.

The star described the home as his ‘haven’ where he ‘feels at peace’ – a place of comfort as he dealt with years of financial woes.

The home is filled with grand decor and sentimental touches – with ornate pieces, stunning windows and sweeping curtains.

Other items include his Royal Welsh Fusiliers cap, a framed photo of Laurence Olivier outside the Strand Theatre in 1958 and his Guinness World Record, which he was awarded in 2010 for becoming the longest serving actor in a serial drama.

Roache said previously: ‘When I left the Army in my mid-20s I set my heart on being an actor, but no one was interested as I hadn’t been to drama school.

‘One day in the late 50s I saw Laurence Olivier in the West End and took this photo of him. I wrote to his theatre company and he invited me backstage at a performance of The Entertainer.

‘He said, ”Don’t give up! I had a tough time when I started too.” I was so inspired I talked my way into a theatre role in Clacton and never looked back.’

Speaking about the story behind his military cap, Roache added: ‘I was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers just after the Coronation in 1953, and was wearing this cap in Jamaica, where I was stationed, when the Queen visited that year.

‘She was such a beautiful young woman, and it might be treason to say so, but as a young man I really fancied her! I’ve been lucky enough to meet her, including when Preston was made a city in 2002.

‘I was told that Her Majesty would ”like a photo with you” so I spent a few minutes chatting to her while this picture here on the coffee table was taken – she was so natural and charming.’