Coronation Street actor Antony Cotton has revealed his upcoming storyline about homelessness coincidentally mirrors a real-life expertise.
In the ITV cleaning soap, he performs barman Sean Tully, who is about to lose his job on the Rovers Return which forces him to sleep in a tent.
Cotton has mentioned he helped a homeless acquaintance in a related predicament.
"At every point we've filmed it I've been able to say: 'My experience is this,'" he mentioned.
The "spooky" expertise occurred earlier this 12 months when the cleaning soap star was filming actuality TV present Dancing On Ice.
The acquaintance had been compelled to depart his household dwelling and resorted to staying in a tent in a stairwell of a council block in Fleetwood, Lancashire.
Cotton mentioned he paid for the person to remain in a lodge, earlier than serving to to seek out him housing by the homelessness charity, Barnabus.
"I might stored this secret (from the Corrie forged) as a result of it was a personal factor.
"I rang up and mentioned: 'There's a actually odd line about Sean, he is mendacity about this job'. They mentioned: 'He's going to be homeless'. Our assistant producer mentioned 'It's a neighborhood story about homelessness'.
"I mentioned: 'Where's he truly going to reside? Whose couch is he on?' They mentioned: 'He's not going to be on a couch. He's going to be homeless, dwelling in a tent.'
"If anyone had acknowledged that to me with out me going by this I'd have mentioned 'That simply doesn't occur'.
"Turns out it's true and very spookily it was the identical story. So much so that I had to go back to Barnabus and say: 'I don't want you to think I've come in here for some weird research and I've picked up this homeless person online'."
Cotton mentioned his character Sean's pleasure results in him sleeping tough as he's too embarrassed to inform the reality about his shift in fortune.
The scenes might be proven from subsequent week.
Cotton additionally revealed that his uncle had been pretending to go to work 5 years after shedding his job for a related cause.
Cotton hopes that the three-month storyline will assist to alter wider perceptions about homeless individuals.
"What's been a real pleasure is usually, not essentially this present or different reveals, you do issue-based storylines and you may inform it is purely for the tip to drive site visitors to a web site.
"Fact is usually stranger that fiction. For me there's a real fact in it. It's a character-based storyline, which everybody knows Coronation Street does higher than anyone else.
"The one thing I hope people will take from it is it can happen to anyone."