TV’s Will Mellor: ‘My dad was my hero but he was tough on me – we’re all here to be better than our parents’

Judging by his character as a child, Will Mellor was always destined to be a household name.

Long before his roles in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Broadchurch, Coronation Street and Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the Stockport-born actor, 50, said that he “loved attention” and craved being a performer – admitting he was probably quite an “annoying kid”.

“I came out the centre of attention because I was the only boy, and I was the youngest,” he laughs, as we sit down to chat about his upcoming memoir, Where There’s A Will: My Story.

“I was always in the middle of the floor, dancing or performing. If there was a stage at a wedding, I was the kid that was (up there).

“I loved the attention, and there was something inside me that never left me, and that was: ‘I have to do this. I have to find a way to perform’. And there wasn’t a point that my family ever said to me, ‘You can’t do that, because we don’t do that round here’.”

Coming from a working-class background, however, Mellor says his path to success wasn’t easy – and he laments the fact that nowadays, kids like him face an industry even more lacking in working-class representation than the one he entered in the mid-Nineties.

When Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps first aired on BBC Two in February 2001, it broke new ground as it told a story about working-class Northern kids with a cast of working-class Northern actors – and for Mellor, who was in his mid-20s when he took on the role of Gaz Wilkinson in the sitcom, it promised to break new ground for working-class visibility in the shining world of TV.

Now 25 years later, however, he is shocked to see that the story remains much the same.

“There’s 8% working-class people working in television right now on screen, and it’s shocking,” he says.

“We need regional accents on TV, we need to represent people from working-class areas… We need to give more opportunities.

“The thing is, talent is everywhere, but opportunities aren’t, and we need to change that.”

Mellor believes he was lucky to have a family that supported him every step of the way and, as he discusses with frank candour in his memoir, his career was earned through his “fight, drive, and desire and want for more” in the face of adversity.

Living with undiagnosed ADHD, Mellor says was seen as “the naughty kid”, “the kid they gave up on and said: ‘He’s a waste of time’.”

It was only as he got older that he came to see ADHD as a “superpower” that made him “unbelievably creative”, adding that his father Bill, who passed away in 2020 just two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer, would tell Mellor he has “a head full of magic”.

However, Mellor’s memoir also delves into the complicated relationship he had with his father – a man he said always believed in him and wanted the best for him, but who had a sudden temper and would give him “a crack round the head” if he stepped out of line – and how the way he was raised has given him pause about how he parents his two children, Jayden and Renee.

“He was my best friend and my hero,” says Mellor of his father.

“But I wouldn’t do what he did to my kids – I wouldn’t put my hands on my children, I wouldn’t be hitting my kids. But in them days, that’s what they did, and everything he did was to try to protect me and try to make me tough enough to deal with the world we live in.

“He was tough on me because he didn’t want me to end up in prison, like he was… When he was strict with me, it was because he loved me… He just did it in his own way.

“He regretted some of it as he got older, but I think we’re all here to be better than our parents. I think that’s the whole point.”

Describing himself as a “family man”, Mellor says that writing his memoir was also an opportunity to reflect on his own parenting: not least the fact that he has spent swathes of time away from his wife Michelle McSween and their two children over the course of his career.

“I hate being away from my family… But I can’t be there all the time because my job means I have to work everywhere,” he laments.

“I have beaten myself up a lot over the years… I missed out on certain things that I should have been there for because I was working, but you can’t have it both ways. I’m in a self-employed industry, and you can’t be turning down work! You never know when the next job’s coming, and the bills are still coming.

“So I have to provide for my family, and I’m very proud that I can do so in this industry because it’s a tough industry to be in.”

By releasing his memoir, which marks his 50th birthday and tells his life story from his early years growing up on a council estate to his varied and successful showbiz career, through personal stories like the death of his sister Joanne in 2012 and his journey through parenthood, Mellor says he hopes not only to give the world an insight into his life, but also to inspire the next generation of working-class actors to push for their dreams.

“I am very proud to be working class,” he says.

“So, this book, if it can make a change to any one working-class kid that goes: ‘He did it, so I can do it…’ That’s why it’s called Where There’s A Will… It’s having the will to keep going. It’s having the will to believe in your dreams, go and get them.”

Mellor says he hopes that telling his story will show kids that “it doesn’t matter where you’re from” – if you have a dream, you should “go and make it happen”.

“You’ve got to back yourself, and you’ve got to believe in yourself.”

Where There’s A Will: My Story by Will Mellor is published in hardback by Sphere, priced £22. Available Thursday November 5.