Died: February 28, 2021. IF television soap actors don’t start out playing characters close to their own personality, they eventually end up doing exactly that. Scriptwriters tend to note personality traits, behavioural tics, the mindset and motivations. But it’s fair to say that from his arrival in Coronation Street in 1976, Johnny Briggs, wasn't too far away from the character he played, the roguish Cockney underwear-factory boss, Mike Baldwin. Once, while extolling the merits of his Floridian holiday home, Briggs said; “I can be me here, not Mike Baldwin.” And then added poignantly. “Although sometimes it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”