Strumpet star was Street smart

CORONATION Street fans will remember him as the unpredictable Barry Connor but long before he walked the cobbles, Frank Grimes was a star of stage and screen.

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A giant of Irish and English theatre, he was also a familiar face to many TV viewers thanks to appearances in Casualty, The Bill, Doctors, Mrs Brown’s Boys and as Holmes in ITV’s The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes in 1991.

However one of his best TV performances was in the 1980 mini series Strumpet City, in which he played a mild-mannered Catholic curate in Dublin under British rule before the First World War, alongside Cyril Cusack, David Kelly and Peter O’Toole.

His best-known film role was the part of Major Fuller in Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far.