CHARLIE Lawson appears to have burned his final bridges with Coronation Street after slamming bosses in his new autobiography.
The former soap star played the iconic Jim McDonald on and off since 1989, but left for good in 2018.
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Charlie previously ripped into Coronation Street in an exclusive chat with The Sun, saying how its “extremely average” acting is turning off viewers.
But now in his new autobiography titled That’s Life, So It Is, the 65-year-old recounts how he was “desperate to leave” the cobbles in 1999.
Charlie told how he disliked one former producer so much he had “neither respect or anything for the man”.
He decided to stay after being convinced by his family, but Charlie said: “I was cajoled into another contract with this lot of amateurs at GTV, but even worse, I had to swallow my pride and stamp on my principles.”
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He continued by revealing he “hated every moment” of playing Jim McDonald in the latter years and held back storming into former producer Jane Macnaught’s office and quitting the street.
Charlie explained: “For months now, I have been going through the motions of turning up and doing Jim McDonald, and hating every moment of it and believe it or believe it not, on more than one occasions seriously considering taking the lift to the fourth floor, walking into Jane Macnaught’soffice, our Christmas producer, and telling her to shove it up their a***s.
“The biggest mistake was that I did not take this action.”
Charlie revealed shortly afterwards he was called to the bosses office and given news his contract would be renewed for just one year, before he’d be written out of Corrie.
He said: “I was deeply hurt and angry. After a ten-year commitment of hard work, and what I considered to be a valuable contribution, I was to be offered what amounted to a fourteen-thousand-pound wage cut, which would escalate, by way of also losing my per diem, to approximately twenty thousand.
“That old phrase of Michael Le Vell’s, for whom I had great respect and admiration, ‘don’t take a wage cut for anyone’, not only reared its ugly head, but proceeded to assault and batter me.”
With imminent bankruptcy, Charlie agreed to stay on as Jim for one more year but said he voiced his concerns on the “state of the character” and the direction he was going.
Charlie was then written out of the ITV soap as his character served a prison sentence for the manslaughter of a drug dealer.
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