

It’s nice to have that connection with him. Having the watch kept him in my thoughts. The first few years after he died every time I looked at it I thought of my dad, and it was quite emotional. He passed away from old age when he was 80, a few years ago now. We ended up winning on penalties and I was dancing on the tables singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at the top of my lungs while all these United fans were crying into their drinks. Then, of course, the turnaround happened: when the Liverpool goalie Jerzy Dudek made that incredible double save against Shevchenko it was better than sex. Liverpool were 3-0 down at half time and I was getting the most unbelievable abuse from all of the Man United fans.

I was in Coronation Street at the time and I was the only Scouser. I was in a bar in Manchester watching Liverpool play Milan in the Champions League Final. Then for the rest of the day, even though it was freezing cold, I went cycling all over the city. I remember seeing it underneath the tree when I got up at 5am and I couldn’t believe it was mine. They must have saved up so much to get this bike. When I was 10, they bought me a Purple Raleigh Chopper for Christmas. Dad was a lorry driver, and Mum didn’t work and had four kids.

I grew up on the Cantril Farm housing estate in Liverpool, which at the time was the roughest in Europe. He has a son, Jack, with his first wife, and lives in Cheshire with his second wife, Jackie, and their two daughters, Anna-Jo and Nellie. He currently presents his Funk and Soul Show on BBC Radio 6 Music and the quiz show Moneybags on Channel 4. He went on to present five series of Robot Wars and provided the voiceovers for the Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle before being cast as philandering taxi driver Lloyd Mullaney in Coronation Street in 2005.

In 1988 his role as Dave Lister in the cult sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf brought him acclaim. He performed his first one-man show in Edinburgh in 1986 and appeared regularly on Saturday Live between 19. Craig Charles grew up in Liverpool and won a national newspaper poetry competition aged 12.
