Alan Rothwell, the actor best known for playing Ken Barlow's younger brother David in the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street, has died at the age of 89. Rothwell appeared in the very first episode of the show on 9 December 1960, portraying a cheerful and likable engineering apprentice who fixes his bicycle in the Barlows' living room just as Ken's new girlfriend arrives.
While his university-educated brother Ken struggled to fulfill his highbrow ambitions, David Barlow quickly achieved his own goals. He became an amateur footballer for the fictional Weatherfield County, scoring on his debut, and later moved to London when a League team signed him in mid-1961. This departure from the soap allowed Rothwell to gain broader television experience, landing a leading role in the series Top Secret (1961-62) as Mike, the nephew of a British agent who teams up with an Argentinian business executive to fight crime in Buenos Aires.
Rothwell returned to Coronation Street for brief visits over the next few years before returning permanently in 1965. David Barlow's professional football career ended due to injury, and after a stint as player-coach back at Weatherfield County, he married Irma Ogden (played by Sandra Gough) and ran the corner shop. In 1968, Rothwell decided to leave the soap for good, and David was given the chance to play professionally in Australia. He and Irma emigrated, but tragedy struck in 1970 when Ken received a phone call informing him that David and his baby son Darren had been killed in a car crash.
Early Life and Career
Born in Oldham, Lancashire, to Alice (née McNerney) and Harry Rothwell, both cotton mill workers, Rothwell was educated at Chadderton Grammar School. He began his acting career at the age of 12, appearing as an urchin in the Robert Donat-Dora Bryan film comedy The Cure for Love (1949). He then performed in plays for BBC radio's Children's Hour from 1951 to 1960. While training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) from 1954 to 1955, he was one of the teenagers presenting the magazine show The Younger Generation (1955).
In 1957, Rothwell switched to television to play Leslie Holmes in two episodes of The Appleyards, a BBC soap for children about a suburban Home Counties family. His big break came back on radio with a three-year run in The Archers (from 1957 to 1960) as Jimmy Grange, a Brookfield farm worker who played guitar in a skiffle band.
Film and Television Work
Shortly before joining Coronation Street, Rothwell starred as a teenage gang member rescued from petty crime and violence by his new girlfriend (played by Carol White) in the film Linda (1960), which was screened in cinemas as the support feature to the kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He then traveled to Sweden for a pioneering attempt to shoot English-language films based on Scandinavian stories for international release. The first Anglo-Swedish production, Two Living, One Dead (1961), directed by Anthony Asquith, starred Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, and Patrick McGoohan, with Rothwell and Michael Crawford playing clerks in a post office raid. Despite the big names, the experiment was disappointing and failed to get a British cinema release.
After his Top Secret role, Rothwell played Charley Bates in a 1962 TV serialisation of Oliver Twist and Johnny Watson in another BBC radio soap, The Dales, during 1964. He acted in dozens of radio plays over the next quarter-century.
Children's Television Presenting
Rothwell became a familiar face as a presenter of two children's shows. In 1969, he took over from Dorothy Smith on the schools programme Picture Box, which featured short films of stories from around the world, and stayed until it ended in 1990. Meanwhile, preschool children saw him in the lunchtime series Hickory House (1973-77), ably assisted by Humphrey, a banana-loving grey cushion, and Dusty, a bad-tempered mop with a long red nose, as well as a string of co-presenters including Amanda Barrie and Elisabeth Sladen.
Return to Soap Opera
In 1986, Rothwell made a prominent return to soap opera in Brookside as Nicholas Black, the second husband of Heather Haversham (Amanda Burton). His character, an apparently easy-going charmer, turned out to be a heroin addict and eventually died of an overdose.
Later Roles
Rothwell's later television roles included the Reverend Jackson in Heartbeat (from 1994 to 1995); three parts in Emmerdale; Mr Ronson, the neighbour of a young dreamer with wacky ideas, in the children's series Wilmot (1999-2000); the technophobe local newspaper subeditor Gerry Stringer in the sitcom Dead Man Weds (2005); and the pub quiz aficionado Brian Valentine in the comedy-drama Starlings (2012-13).
Rothwell's first marriage, to singer Marjorie Ward in 1961, ended in divorce. In 1967, he married Maureen Hayden. Although they divorced in 1999, the couple were subsequently reunited. Rothwell is survived by Maureen, their sons Toby and Ben, and a granddaughter, Alys.
Alan Rothwell, actor and television presenter, born 9 February 1937; died 14 May 2026.
