He became a Corrie legend as hardman Jim McDonald but the actor who played him reckons the long-running soap has lost its magic.
Charlie Lawson, who played Jim from October 1989 and was a regular character until 2000, thinks Corrie has gone downhill since the nineties.
The 62-year-old thinks it's because there are so many characters and young people in the industry are more concerned with fame than acting reports Daily Star Sunday.
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Charlie said: “Do I think it was better in the 80s and 90s? I would have to say yes.
“That’s not the cast’s fault. It’s very hard when you’ve got 70 people and six episodes to do a week.
“When I was first on it, we had more time, we had more opportunity and we had less people in the show.
"There was more time for characters to relate to each other.”
Speaking with the Distinct Nostalgia podcast, Charlie said he liked Corrie when it focused on kitchen sink drama.
He said: “Good acting is about people talking to each other, it’s the spoken word.
"That’s why radio is the finest medium there is. You don’t need to shoot pretty pictures.
“You want two actors talking to each other. That’s what it’s all about. We still had a lot of that in the 80s and 90s.
“In those days characters talked to each other. They shouted at each other, they cried with each other.
"The dialogue was the most important thing, and the performance.
“We still had time for rehearsals and we still had time to think about it. The directors had time to spend on the actors. It was about the performance.”
Charlie thinks the rise of celebrity culture has been bad for Corrie.
He said: “In the 80s and early 90s, celebrity didn’t exist. We didn’t have any of that. There were no mobile phones, no iPads. Celebrity was just starting.
“I think young people now –apart from the fact that a lot of them just want to be famous as opposed to be actors – they don’t know how easy they get it.”
Corrie were left hoping Jim will make a comeback to the cobbles after the door was left open for his return in 2018.
He turned up on the street again to cruelly con his ex wife Liz with his girlfriend Hannah Gilmore.
Hannah pretended she was Katie, Liz and Jim's daughter who died shortly after she was born in 1992, in an attempt to scam the Rovers Return barmaid out of her life savings.
The truth was uncovered when Hannah realised Jim still had feelings for Liz and plotted for Liz to walk in on them sharing a passionate kiss.
In a dramatic showdown at Katie's grave Liz berated Jim, who has myotonic dystrophy which affects the muscles and causes them to waste away, and made clear she never wanted to see him again.
Asked if he still watches the soap he joked: “I’m usually in the pub at 7.30pm!”
Jim, a former solider who served in the The Royal Engineers, also had dramatic storylines including sleeping with his son Steve's ex girlfriend Fiona Middleton and then stopping her wedding to Alan McKenna, discovering Liz was having an affair with his physiotherapist Michael Wall and in 2000 he was sent down for the manslaughter of Jez Quigley who had Steve beaten up by a gang in a car park.
He escaped from prison but was caught by police and sent back.
He was released in 2007 for good behaviour but back behind bars four years later.
In 2011 Jim, who has twin sons Andy and Steve with Liz, was jailed again for trying to rob a building society so his wife Liz could buy the Rovers Return.
In 2014 years ago recovering alcoholic Peter Barlow was in prison at the same time after being wrongly accused of the murder of babysitter Tina McIntyre and he was targeted and bullied by Jim who gave him contraband alcohol on purpose.
