Coronation Street star Colson Smith is embroiled in dispute with his new neighbours after his house alarm was left ringing for hours.
The actor, who plays Craig Tinker in the ITV soap, said he was “in the bad books” after a mix-up left his ear-splitting security siren going off for more than four hours.
Colson is in the middle of renovating his new house in Manchester after moving out of the flat he shared with co-star Ben Price, who played Nick Tilsley in the soap.
He revealed the war with his neighbours during his podcast Sofa Cinema Club, which he co-hosts with Ben and fellow Corrie star Jack P. Shepherd, and confessed he was left red-faced when he realised the builders had made a glaring error.
"I have builders doing renovations on the house. I was in Scarborough at cricket and cue a text message at 5.30pm from the neighbour of the house I've bought: 'Hi Colson, just so you know the alarm is going off at the house’,” he began.
"The builders had set the alarm off, turned it off, and when they left turned it back on. So they had left and half an hour later the alarm goes back off. I spoke to the builders and they said, 'Yeah, we've sorted it. It's off.' So I think there's nothing to worry about,” he added.
Relieved, Colson turned his attention back to the cricket, but was mortified when he was told by his disgruntled neighbours that the alarm was still blaring.
"Cue 9.30pm, neighbour rings - the alarm is still going off. I thought it had been sorted. When the builders left the alarm wasn't going off, but as they left they reconnected the power, which charged the alarm back up, so it set off again,” Colson explained.
The actor, 22, was then forced to ring his mum to get her to sort the problem, as he was still in Scarborough, more than 100 miles away from his Manchester pad.
"I have to ring my mum at 9.30pm on a Saturday night. I said to her, 'It's a two-minute job when you get there, you just put the code in,’” he continued, but his alarm woes didn’t end there, as he didn’t know what the code was.
“The worst thing was, I rang my mum when she was there and the sound of this alarm - it was so loud. People were coming from the other side of the field saying: 'What's going on with that alarm?'”
His neighbours were even wearing ear defenders while the house alarm debacle rumbled on, and Colson was devastated to be upsetting his neighbours, even before he’s moved in.
"The neighbour said to me: 'I don't mind,' but she had ear defenders on. I was like: 'You can't live like this, it's got to get turned off.' So I've not even moved in yet and I'm already going to be in the bad books,” he grumbled.
