John Savident, who has died aged 86, was a skilled, colourful, sometimes broad but always memorable actor who played one of TV’s best loved soap opera characters – the bombastic but lovable butcher Fred Elliott in the ITV series Coronation Street – for more than a decade.
Fred, who first appeared in 1994 and became a regular two years later, was soon a favourite with viewers, thanks in part to the enjoyably imitable repetitive vocal tic that Savident invested him with: “Ashley, I say, Ashley,” he would utter when addressing his young nephew (later revealed to be his son), Ashley Peacock (Steven Arnold).
