Coronation Street’s Michael Le Vell has told of his heartbreak at the death of show legend Bill Tarmey’s son.
Carl Piddington, whose dad played cobbles favourite Jack Duckworth, lost a ten-year battle with an aggressive brain tumour on Tuesday.
And the 52-year-old’s passing came two days before pals Le Vell and former Corrie star Nigel Pivaro were due to visit him at his home in Ashton-under-Lyne, Gtr Manchester.
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Le Vell, 54, said: “I’m gutted and deeply saddened that I missed seeing my pal before the end and wasn’t able to say goodbye properly.”
Pivaro, 59, who was Bill’s screen son Terry Duckworth from 1983 to 2012, added: “The Street family has lost one of its own. Mike and I have known Carl 36 years.
Bill would bring him and sister Sara on to the set and Carl would refer to me as ‘Our Kid’, as if I was his older brother.”
Le Vell managed and trained the Corrie All Stars charity football team, which raised thousands for Brain Tumour Research.
When Carl was diagnosed in 2009 and doctors told him he had only six months to live, Bill wept and said: “We are lions, son, we can fight this.”
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He quit Corrie after 34 years to support Carl, who tried treatments including chemo and cannabis oil.
Bill died at his Tenerife holiday home in 2012 after suffering a heart attack, aged 71. Wife Alma passed away in 2015, aged 69, and friends said she could not cope without her childhood sweetheart, whom she wed in 1962.
Carl felt their deaths were his fault and said: “Something that plays on my mind is the guilt I have for my dad leaving the show he loved, because that is what eventually killed him.
“As a family we kept asking him, ‘Are you sure you want to leave?’ He just said he’d had enough and that family was more important to him. And then, when he went, that’s what killed my mam. It’s all down on me.”
Carl also said he had a visit from his father’s spirit. He recalled: “My dad just stood there and I said, ‘You look absolutely brilliant, Dad. Is this the way it is?’.
“And he replied, ‘Yes son this is the way it is.’ I said, ‘Are you all right?’ He replied, ‘I am great, son.’’
