Comedian and actor Jason Manford has said he asked for his storyline on Waterloo Road to be changed before taking on the role after feedback from his daughters who were unhappy with it.
The 43-year-old played headteacher Steve Savage in the BBC drama, who had a romantic interest in canteen worker Nicky Walters, played by Kym Marsh, 48, but Manford said his character was initially supposed to fall in love with a teacher in her 20s.
When the Salford-born comedian told his daughters the story they told him it would be “weird” and urged him to get it altered.
Manford told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “It’s very of its time I suppose, so one of the storylines they mentioned was that my teacher, he’s a widower, and he was going to have this romance with this teacher.
“They mentioned the teacher who it was, and I mentioned it to my girls, who loved the show, and they were like, ‘you can’t do that, you weirdo, she’s about 24 and you’re 43, that’s weird’.
“I didn’t know the character, so I rang the producer and I said, look, I’d love to be in it, what a privilege to be the headteacher, but I said, I can’t have this storyline, it’s just weird, it’s just not right in today’s society, and certainly my daughters were not happy with it.
“So I said, is there another more age-appropriate member of staff who maybe he could have this romance with? They said, what about Kim Marsh? And I said, I’ll see you Monday.”
Manford appeared in series 14 of the show this year, which saw his character led to the cells in its final episode for perverting the course of justice after one of the school’s students, Boz Osbourne, was killed by his son Billy Savage, also a student at the school.
For the next series of Waterloo Road, Manford’s character will be replaced by a new headteacher, Dame Stella Drake, played by Lindsey Coulson.
Manford began his career as a stand-up comedian and has gone on to present a number of TV programmes including BBC’s The One Show and is currently on a stand-up tour called A Manford All Seasons, which will run until November 2025.
