John McArdle

John played Billy Corkhill in Brookside for four years and Jim Oulton in Mersey Beat, for which he won the award for Best Actor in the Regional Television Society Awards 2002. His numerous television appearances include The Case, Waterloo Road, Out of Hours, And the Beat goes on, All the Small things etc. John played regular Ronnie Hale in ITV’s Emmerdale, and most recently guest starred in an episode of Clink for Channel 5.

On stage, he appeared in An Enemy of the People at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton and he toured with Frantic Assembly’s Things I Know To Be True. He recently finished touring Rapture Theatre’s production of The Red Lion.

One morning, sixteen-year-old John McArdle’s father went to work and never came back. Struck down prematurely by a fatal heart attack, the forty-eight-year-old professional soldier left behind a wife and five children to grieve his death.

Now, more than five decades later, award-winning actor John McArdle writes a tender and moving letter to his father that provides an intimate portrait of the impact of his father’s death, how he tried to cope, and how he turned his wild adventures abroad into a successful acting career.

You Never Said Goodbye by John McArdle