Coronation Street star Daniel Brocklebank reveals Billy Mayhew name change

Daniel Brocklebank has revealed his 'Coronation Street' character Billy Mayhew was originally called Hugh.

The 44-year-old actor has played the vicar since 2014 and has now spilled that his alter ego's name was changed to Billy because Hugh was considered “too posh” by soap bosses.

In an interview with Inside Soap magazine, he said: “My character was originally going to be called Hugh. But the bosses decided that made him sound too posh, so they changed it to Billy!”

Daniel felt the vicar was “a lot cooler” in his earlier appearances compared to his current “nerdy geek” phase.

He added: “I was told right from the start that the fact he was gay was very incidental; it wasn't a defining characteristic. When I look back on those first episodes, Billy was a lot cooler.

“He's more of a nerdy geek now, but everything he's been through would have a detrimental effect on his coolness, I suppose.

“Or it could be the fact that I'm a massive geek, and I wasn't able to uphold that coolness for 10 years.”

Recently, Billy has had to come to terms with his husband Paul Foreman (Peter Ash) being diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), a degenerative condition that can lead to loss of speech and paralysis.

Daniel has found the storyline particularly challenging and emotional to convey because his grandfather was diagnosed with MND in real life.

He said: “The past six months have been really gruelling to film, in terms of the emotional content that Pete and I have had to do. In a lot of ways, this MND story has been the most difficult one for me to play, purely because it's so close to my own lived experience. The writing and research teams have been so brilliantly accurate with the way they have portrayed Paul's illness and Billy caring for him, it's certainly made me revisit things me and my family went through while caring for my grandfather.”