Dean Sullivan, who has died aged 68 after suffering from prostate cancer, played Jimmy Corkhill in Brookside – a character involved in petty crime before mixing with hardened criminals and turning to drugs – and was the longest-serving actor in the Liverpool drama, created by Phil Redmond, that shook up television soap opera when it began with the launch of Channel 4 in 1982.
He joined as a semi-regular in 1986, playing the younger brother of Billy (John McArdle), who had been introduced with his family the previous year. Jimmy’s early scams included burgling Billy’s home for the insurance to ease their financial woes and fiddling their electricity meter.
Jimmy was friends with a younger generation of “scallies” – Barry Grant (played by Paul Usher) and Terry Sullivan (Brian Regan) – and teamed up for various shady “business enterprises” with the window cleaner Sinbad (Michael Starke). But his associations with Liverpool’s underworld brought him and Billy close to peril. The back story was that they had always worshipped their elder brother, Frankie, who was killed in a gang fight.
On screen, when the murderer, Joey Godden (Carl Chase), was released from prison in 1990 – the year Sullivan joined the Brookside cast full-time – Jimmy vowed to get revenge, but confronting him, aided by a reluctant Billy, led only to the brothers themselves being attacked. Later, Jimmy found himself to be the getaway driver when Godden was involved in an armed robbery.
When Jimmy’s girlfriend, Kathy Roach (Noreen Kershaw), then ditched him, his estranged wife, Jackie (Sue Jenkins), took him back. But a descent into hell saw him become a drug dealer, then addict, before being jailed for breaking into Brookside homes to fund his fix. His addiction also caused the deaths of Frank Rogers (Peter Christian) and Tony Dixon (Mark Lennock) when he crashed into their car.
The soap star whose character was always on the wrong side of the law was – off screen, until 1990 – also holding down a job where he had to be a role model: as a supply teacher in London primary schools. “I think the kids thought some scally would be teaching them, but they got a rude awakening because I’m a stickler for discipline,” Sullivan told the author Geoff Tibballs, for the book Brookside: The First Ten Years (1992).
Brookside’s social realism and gritty storylines were credited with inspiring a new generation of soap. It was followed in 1985 by the BBC’s EastEnders. But from a peak of more than seven million viewers, Brookside’s ratings fell by the end of the 1990s as storylines became increasingly sensational, and the series was axed by Channel 4 in 2003. As the final episode finished, Sullivan’s character was seen scrawling a letter “D” at the end of the Brookside Close sign.
He was born in Liverpool to Evelyn (nee Goddard) and William Sullivan, the fourth of their seven children, and attended St Margaret’s high school, Aigburth. He acted as an amateur with the Merseyside Youth Drama group in his teens, described by one local critic as “a commanding judge” in the trial scene of Toad of Toad Hall at the Neptune theatre, Liverpool, in 1974.
After graduating from Lancaster University with a BEd in drama and education, he taught drama and English in primary schools around Liverpool for six years and directed school plays.
He continued in amateur dramatics with the Neptune theatre company, earning further good notices for parts such as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Tommy in Breezeblock Park, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jimmy in Look Back in Anger and Horst in Bent.
Turning professional, he joined the Pitlochry festival theatre company as an assistant stage manager and actor in 1984, before appearing at Theatr Clwyd, Mold, and the Gateway theatre, Chester, working as a supply teacher between jobs.
In 1987, Sullivan starred as a manipulative producer in Soaplights, a satire on glossy TV serials written by Redmond and performed at Liverpool Playhouse. The Financial Times observed that his physical clowning made him look like “a scrawnier John Cleese”.
On stage, he also starred as Scullery in the northern premiere of Jim Cartwright’s play Road (Octagon theatre, Bolton, 1988). He then formed the Liverpool Theatre Company, directing productions at the Neptune theatre (later the Epstein), Speke Hall and outdoor venues between 1989 and 1994, including The Importance of Being Earnest, Victoria Wood’s play Talent, Hay Fever and Blue Remembered Hills.
Some of the company’s actors featured in Cluedo-style “murder weekends” organised at hotels by the Murder Game business he founded.
On BBC Radio Merseyside, Sullivan played Sam Jackson in the soap opera The Merseysiders (1987-90). In 2003, he won the British Soap Awards’ special achievement honour. His later TV appearances included parts in Doctors (in 2005) and Crime Stories (in 2012).
Sullivan is survived by four brothers, Alan, Brian, Derek and Neil, and a sister, Joy.
• Dean Sullivan, actor and director, born 7 June 1955; died 29 November 2023
