Bryan Mosley

Bryan Mosley (25 August 1931 – 9 February 1999) was a British actor, best known for his role as grocer Alf Roberts in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Early life Mosley was born in Leeds, an only child, to Agnes Basquill, a print worker, and Jimmy Mosley, a labourer at a dye factory. He attended Leeds Central High School and made his stage debut, aged 10, as the back end of a cow in the pantomime Cinderella. He modelled for clothes catalogues and held a childhood ambition to become a missionary. Instead, aged 13, Mosley won a scholarship to Leeds College of Art, where he studied from 1944 to 1946, and subsequently worked as a commercial artist. He also worked in a bookshop, as a drama teacher and sold encyclopaedias door-to-door. In 1950, Mosley's father, a smoker and heavy drinker, died from a heart attack. His mother subsequently remarried, a marriage which Mosley did not approve of, and he remained estranged from his mother until her death. In 1952, after national service in the RAF, working in air traffic control just outside Newcastle and in Scotland, Mosley trained as an actor at the Bradford Civic Theatre and Esme Church's Northern Theatre School. He then toured with the New Pilgrim Players, playing in churches, abbeys, pubs and prisons, before working in repertory theatre in York, Perth, Derby and Harrogate.