| Alan Bradley | |||||||||||
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| Coronation Street character | |||||||||||
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| Portrayed by | Mark Eden | ||||||||||
| Duration | 1986–1989 | ||||||||||
| First appearance | Episode 2587 15 January 1986 | ||||||||||
| Last appearance | Episode 3002 8 December 1989 | ||||||||||
| Classification | Former; regular | ||||||||||
| Introduced by | John G. Temple | ||||||||||
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Alan Bradley is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Mark Eden. He first appeared on 15 January 1986 and became the show's main antagonist until the character was killed off on 8 December 1989.
The character's story arc began with Alan visiting Weatherfield to reconcile with his long-lost daughter Jenny (Sally Ann Matthews), following the death of her mother and his ex-wife Pat – who was reported to have been killed in a car accident. This works successfully and Alan subsequently moves into Weatherfield to live with Jenny and her foster mother Rita Fairclough (Barbara Knox), whom he gradually establishes a relationship with as the pair end up falling in love with each other. Alan later plans to marry Rita in a surprise wedding between them, but is left unhappy when she doesn't go through with it and prefers for them to remain partners.
Throughout his time on the show, Alan exhibits a volatile and temperamental streak due to his psychopathic nature. This proves evident at the times where the character inflicts his behaviour onto Rita's several friends and neighbors alike. During the course of his story arc, Alan has an affair with local barmaid Gloria Todd (Sue Jenkins); beats up her troublesome customer, Terry Duckworth (Nigel Pivaro), at The Rovers Return Inn public house for badmouthing him; repeatedly clashes with the pub's landlady Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear); sparks a feud with Jenny's boyfriend Martin Platt (Sean Wilson); threatens to hurt Rita's business partner Mavis Riley (Thelma Barlow) and her husband Derek Wilton (Peter Baldwin) for intruding on his plan to make changes at Rita's shop called "The Kabin"; planned to buy the Weatherfield garage from its departing manager, Brian Tilsley (Christopher Quinten), until the latter decided to stay in the street with his wife Gail (Helen Worth) and cancelled the sale before Alan could bid for the new ownership; harbored unrequited romantic feelings for his client Carole Burns (Irene Skillington); dismissed Jenny's engagement to her fiancé Patrice Podevin (Franck Dubosc) after she ran away to France to stop her father controlling every aspect of her life; tried unsuccessfully to go into partnership with his boss Dave Craig (Alan Hulse) upon creating his own business, initially dubbed "Bradley Securities Limited" and later renamed "Weatherfield Security Systems"; and attempted to rape his receptionist Dawn Prescott (Louise Harrison) after she rebuffed his efforts to spark a romance between them.
The follow-up of his attempt to rape Dawn proved to be Alan's downfall, after Rita finds out about just not the incident and his other misdeeds – but also learns that Alan had fraudulently posed as her late husband, Len (Peter Adamson), and mortgaged her house without her own consent to start his own business. When she reports his crime to the building society to stop him from further exploiting her assets, Alan tries to kill Rita and is consequently arrested as a result. He is soon released and Alan proceeds to torment Rita for months, which leads to her having a breakdown and fleeing to Blackpool. Because of this, Alan becomes shunned in Weatherfield and practically loses everything – including his daughter – all around him. He eventually tracks down Rita after uncovering her whereabouts from The Rovers' landlord, Alec Gilroy (Roy Barraclough), and travels to Blackpool in a bid to prove to the community that he didn't kill her. The character's attempt to force Rita in returning to Weatherfield with him leads to Alan chasing her onto an oncoming Blackpool tram, which narrowly misses Rita and ends up fatally hitting Alan – consequently killing him off and thus ending his reign of terror for good.
Depicted as one of the best soap villains of all time and in the programme itself, the character Alan Bradley served as an inspiration for future antagonists on the show; including Richard Hillman (Brian Capron) and Pat Phelan (Connor McIntyre).