For ten long years, he played viewer favourite, Les Battersby on Coronation Street.
But retired soap star Bruce Jones admits things got seriously bad after he left the ITV show, as he blew through his £1million fortune, lost his home, and ended up living on benefits.
Speaking to The Sun, the 66-year-old says: “[After] being on Corrie it was much worse claiming benefits as people recognised me in the Job Centre. It was embarrassing and though nobody said anything to me, I knew that I was instantly recognisable and the Job Centre wasn’t really the place I wanted to be.”
He adds that he only claimed for six weeks and would never again, saying: “I found it pretty soul-destroying and disheartening.”
Bruce, who was on the soap between 1997 and 2007, now lives comfortably in Wales. But in 2015 he ended up living in a caravan when his two homes got repossessed by the bank.
He says he was also forced to sign on for benefits in the eighties, before he got his break on Corrie, explaining: “I still wanted to be the breadwinner and found being out of work hard to bear. It was depressing; as the man of the house I felt I should be going out and bringing home the wages.”
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Bruce’s iconic character, Les, was best known for all those comical mishaps during his marriage to Janice, and later to Cilla, Fiz and Chesney’s mum.
But he left the cobbles under a cloud in 2007, when he was reportedly sacked for leaking the outcome of Tracy Barlow’s trial.
Perhaps because of that, he said in an interview last year that he no longer watches Corrie, blaming the violent storylines.
Speaking to The Sun, Bruce said the show, “went too far. The violence when I was there wasn’t as bad as that. I don’t know why it’s gone that way. I can’t watch any more because it’s too violent.”
He added that others agree with him, saying: “People really rant. I’m not joking you, they are mad. They’re really mad. People come up to me in the street [and say], ‘We’re not watching that, we’d rather watch Emmerdale’. Just because the world’s gone violent doesn’t mean the feel-good TV show has to go violent.”
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