Corrie’s Curly Watts has come back from the brink

Kevin Kennedy reflects on his well-documented battle with alcoholism.

We know him best as Coronation Street’s Curly Watts, of course, even though it’s 10 years since he left The Street but Kevin Kennedy retains a huge fondness for the character that made his name, and for Corrie.

Curly provided the Street with some of its most memorable moments and his on-screen marriage to Raquel, played by Sarah Lancashire, was TV gold.

We’ll always think of Curly as the unlucky-in-love young man of the cobbles that’s why we always knew his on-screen happiness wouldn’t last. So it’s hard to believe Kevin’s now 52.

Well, he’s pretty sure he is. He pauses when I ask him. “Oh I have to think about that now,” he laughs. “It’s terrible. I go into rooms and can’t remember why I went in!”

He has a great sense of humour despite the fact he’s had a well-documented battle with alcoholism and parts of his life read like one of Corrie’s more dramatic storylines.

That descent into alcoholism saw his first marriage break up. His subsequent second marriage ended up on the rocks thanks to his problem with booze, though he’s happily back together with wife Clare now.

He went through the heartache of losing his relationship with son Ryan and later learning he’d been jailed for armed robbery. But that ability to laugh hasn’t left him. Even after ending up in The Priory, the clinic celebs often turn to for rehab when life spirals out of control, he referred to himself and fellow patients as “The Loser’s Club”. He commented while in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that he was having a really good time but the only thing missing was a bar at the end of the room!

A quick look at his Twitter feed shows that sense of humour is never far away.

“Today I’m 15 years clean/sober, that means in reality I have a 15 year old’s mentality, that explains a lot ha ha,” he said recently. Those 15 years were a long time coming. “Well, when you make the decision to get sober you want to be 10 years into it after 10 minutes!” he laughs.

We discuss Scotland’s own alcohol problem. A report last year suggested 35% of 13-year-olds were binge drinkers.

“It’s all about education,” he says. “If you said to the average kid would you take heroin, they’d say no, because they’ve been educated. But a pint? That’s a different kettle of fish. It’s the norm. So it’s vital we talk to our kids and say, well, this could happen.”

Perhaps strangely, he credits the media for helping him to quit the booze and sort his life out. “I managed to get on the road to recovery despite the fact that I was living in the glare of publicity,” he says. “The media played a big part in my recovery. I was convinced they were watching me. Looking back, they probably weren’t. But I thought if I was spotted going into an off licence it would be on News at Ten. That’s how big my ego was! So they played their part. Got me a bit further down the road to recovery.”

Kevin, of Brighton, knows he didn’t treat people as well as he always should have, getting married for the first time without telling his parents and spending too much time partying when he was in the grip of alcoholism. Interestingly, Kevin says his mum glamourised his drinking problem, saying no rehab clinic would be able to “hold our Kevin”.

“Well, that’s a mum thing. I mean, she doesn’t think that now, it was her way of dealing with it at the time, probably a coping mechanism.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Kevin doesn’t feel any guilt over what he put his family through. “Well, no. Because it’s an emotion you can’t really afford, it’ll just send you back the way. You’ve got to focus on the future.”

Despite the fact he tried to repair his relationship with son Ryan and his first wife, things didn’t work out. I ask if that’s a continuing sadness. “I’ve drawn a line under it now,” he says, after a pause.

He continues that life’s not perfect, though he’s happily settled with Clare and their two daughters, Katie-May, 9, and Grace, 6. “We have two beautiful girls and we thought we couldn’t have them. I hope they’ll be sensible with drink, but that’s up to them. We’ve found a bridge to normal living. And by normal living I mean . . . normal. We have rows like everyone else, we have fears fears of financial instability, fears for our children. We’re not wrapped up in some happy hippy bubble!”

Kevin admits he still loves pubs. “I’m not anti-drink or anti-pubs. I eat in there, watch football, meet people. I’m not a flag waver. I’m just a normal bloke who wants to help other normal blokes.”

By helping other people, he means celebs like former Loose Woman Denise Welch, who turned to him for help quitting the drink. But he’s also opening his own counselling service, Discover Recovery. He says it helps him to stay on

the straight and narrow, helping others.

Kevin’s a world away from Curly, of course. But he’s made no secret of the fact he’d love to revisit him.

Surely Curly and Raquel have to be re-united, I say.

“Well, to be honest I can’t see that happening,” he says, cautiously. “People have asked me lots of times what I would like to see. But I would leave that to the writers. They’ve been brilliant. I wouldn’t tell them how to do their job.”

He loved his time in The Street. But he remembers it as a lot of graft. “It was hard work. But we were a gang, we had laughs, too. Whenever I’m up in Manchester, I pop into the studios and have a cup of tea.

“I could never mind that people often know me as Curly he opened so many doors for me.”

These days, Kevin’s a West End star, starring in the Queen musical We Will Rock You. “I get to sing in front of 2,000 people. There’s nothing like a live audience. The only problem is the commute now that’s a hassle!”

The Street to Recovery, by Kevin Kennedy, is out now.