It’s coming to something (old age, perhaps?) when you find yourself sharing an object of lust with Audrey Roberts from Coronation Street.
No, I’m not talking about Nigel Havers – do behave yourself. I’m talking about the man she’s currently bickering with Rula Lenska about. Audrey calls him Marc. I call him actor Andrew Hall. Or, more properly, I call him Russell Parkinson from 70s-80s sitcom Butterflies.
Ah, Russell… I used to get quite breathless when he was on-screen. Maybe it was his very figure-hugging jeans and lovely loose shirts. Or his lovely curly hair and firm jawline. Russell was always successful with the “chicks,” but could be kind and sensitive and (when provoked) nice to his long-suffering mum. He was cool, albeit in a slightly embarrassing, scripted-by-an-older-person kind of way, but he carried it off well.
Unlike his Butterflies “brother” Nicholas Lyndhurst, who went on to become a household face thanks to Only Fools and Horses etc, Andrew Hall kind of faded from televisual view. He’s had bit parts in Holby, Casualty and EastEnders (he was the man Janine almost slept with the night before she married Ryan), but has mainly been working in theatre as an actor and director.
So how has he aged (he’s now in his mid-50s)? Well, with that bone structure you’re never going to go far wrong, and he’s still pretty handsome (though PLA Jr reckons he speaks without his top and bottom teeth ever losing contact with each other). And he’s still got the fabulous, posh caramel voice that used to make my teeny toes curl. Most definitely worth fighting Rula Lenska for.
Posted by PLA (also in the Corrie-related Lustbox: Linus Roache, Anthony Valentine and Rob James-Collier)
HOLBY CITY BEHIND THE SCREEN
pauseliveaction 
Ha! I’d forgotten about him, and I don’t watch Corrie of course, but I used to really fancy him in Butterflies. What a pleasant trip down telly memory lane.
Ooh! We don’t often agree on men. I’m thrilled! You should have a look at Corrie to see what you think about how he’s ageing.
I will do. But on the ‘agreeing on men theme’, did you see that the chap from the Tudors (not Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) – Henry Cavill, is going to be the lead in the new Superman movie (Man of Steel)? No idea how you feel about him, but frankly, you’d be a fool not to appreciate his obvious charms…
I don’t know who he is. Haven’t seen The Tudors. Will google.
Have now googled Henry Cavill. Verdict: ordinary, though his mouth does have smiley corners, which I like. However, this is my idea of an action hero.
I don’t think PLA and I have yet found a chap we would fight over (except maybe Eric the Vampire). In Butterflies I always preferred Nicholas Lyndhurst and his unfeasibly long legs to Adam, who I found smug. He sure has aged well though.
Nicholas Lyndhurst was Adam, Andrew Hall was Russell (she says, with the confidence of one who has recently looked at the BBC Butterflies page). He was a bit smug, but with that bum he had every reason.
We might have a minor skirmish over Linus Roache, possibly?
No, Linus doesn’t do it for me. Whenever I look at him I see the ghost of Ken Barlow flitting across his face.
I find Ken rather attractive.
Good heavens, do you? Well at least we will never have to scratch each others’ eyes out.
There is that.
I once met Andrew Hall, in 1997; he and his family happened to be watching the same pantomime as my family and myself. My dad spotted him during the interval, and my mum and I went to chat to him.He was very nice.
I fancied Adam, at least in the early episodes; he was very cute, with his urchin hairstyle which suited his baby face. I yearned to enter the programme and sing the Clout song “If she doesn’t come back, I’ll be your substitute”, to Adam, in the episode about Annie dumping him. But Adam/Nicholas had already lost his cuteness by the final series; whereas Andrew Hall has aged well.
Oh, I do like to hear that people are as nice in real life as they seem on the telly.