- I was there in the 90s for 11 years and we were getting between 16 and 20 million - and 5 million (viewers now) is not a lot. 'In 10 years who knows if we will have a Coronation Street, we're all changing our viewing habits as it is already.
- And I hope to God that Corrie and EastEnders or whatever, Emmerdale Farm are around in 10 years but I think people start to switch off because boxes are being ticked with such heavy black ink and I mean that across the whole television industry.
- Do I think it was better in the 80s and 90s? I would have to say yes. That's not the cast's fault. It's very hard when you've got 70 people and six episodes to do a week. Good acting is about people talking to each other, it's the spoken word. That's why radio is the finest medium there is. You don't need to shoot pretty pictures.
- There's every chance my character could make a comeback but it's not going to be as easy as my last return a few years ago. People are terrified of offending people. I hear from the cast that you can't say boo to a goose anymore lest you offend someone. And that offends me to be honest with you.
- I would love for the McDonalds to reunite. But I am not sure the writers would know what to do with Jim. He is an old beast from a different age.
- I do know there are at least two long-term cast members who aren't happy. There is a feeling there are too many episodes and that the production team don't have time to give the attention to detail they did before. If you look at the quality of the writers we had, we had great writers.
- Where do you go from 2.6 million at Christmas? That is a very, very disappointing viewing figure. We were getting three or four times that for a single episode on a Monday night in the Nineties. I realise watching habits have totally changed, so they have a very difficult uphill struggle.
- Viewers are getting turned off by too many young story-lines. In my day, in the Nineties, we didn't have any woke issues, we didn't have any political correctness, we had none of that. We were able to tell stories and tell them properly. I suspect now half the meetings that they have upstairs on the sixth floor are about what is politically acceptable, all this stuff that they feel they have to address. And the silent majority of TV viewers are not interested in the slightest by all this.
- People are getting a little bit gobsmacked and fed up with all this. Jim wasn't exactly politically correct, never mind woke!
- You know, we never worried about ratings because it wasn't an issue. We were always getting ten to 12 million. And then Christmas time, like I think the McDonald family got 20 million once when there was a domestic violence issue. An awful lot of people are saying there's nothing like that anymore - they can't all be wrong.
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