Sir Ian McKellen almost appeared on Emmerdale, but unfortunately,
Coronation Street’s creator prevented the casting.
While appearing on This Morning last year, Sir Ian, now 85, spoke about
his master plan to appear in every soap playing the same character.
The idea began to formulate when he appeared in ten episodes of Coronation Street in 2005 as con artist Lionel Hipkiss, who pretended to be an author called Mel Hutchwright.
Lionel caused havoc when he tried to trick the street’s book club into funding the publishing of his nonexistent novel, but luckily Ken Barlow (William Roache) exposed him in the nick of time.
