Andy Devine obituary

The actor Andy Devine, who has died aged 79 of pneumonia following a fall, spent 10 years from 2000 in the rural TV soap Emmerdale as the lazy, scruffy alcoholic Shadrach Dingle. The character was first seen at the funeral of his nephew Butch, when he became drunk and fell asleep in church.

The Dingle clan had by then become regulars in Emmerdale, bringing drama and comedy to a serial that had begun as a tale of gentle farming folk. Shadrach’s younger brother, Zak, was the Dingle patriarch, a lovable rogue. Devine’s character could rarely be described as lovable, although maybe he deserved sympathy when it emerged that his girlfriend, Faith, had cheated on him with his brother, married him while pregnant, and let him believe that he was the father of Zak’s son Cain. Shadrach and Faith also had a daughter, Chastity.

Shadrach admitted to having had an affair himself that resulted in the birth of a daughter given away for adoption. He also tried to seduce Zak’s second wife, Lisa, after arriving in Emmerdale.

Shadrach’s many drunken stupors resulted in moments of comedy and tragedy. He once fell into a freshly dug grave while, on another occasion, fully clothed, he fell asleep in the bath, which overflowed and crashed through the floor, into the living room.

Devine’s time in Emmerdale came to an end in 2010 after 645 episodes, when Shadrach’s fondness for drink cost him his life. After buying a six-pack of beer, he tripped on a footbridge and dropped the cans into the river. In an effort to retrieve them, he collapsed and drowned. His last words were: “Oh, me cans!”

Andy was born Peter Devine in Manchester, to May (nee Brookes), a fur machinist, and Thomas Devine, a lathe turner, and brought up in the Cheetham Hill area of the city. “I never wanted to be an actor – I always wanted to be a pirate,” he said. At the age of 17, in 1959, he joined the Royal Navy and served for eight years, as an aircraft handler and firefighter at Portland and Yeovilton, and seeing the world on ships that went as far afield as Australia, Singapore, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Navy friends nicknamed him “Andy” after the American western star.

Following a brief return to Manchester, Devine decided to settle in Australia in 1967 after being offered a job selling yachts. He said he took up acting there in an attempt to impress a woman in Sydney, where at the age of 38 he auditioned at a theatre and was taken on. On Australian television, he had small one-off roles in the soap A Country Practice (in 1987 and 1988), the magistrates’ court drama Rafferty’s Rules (1988) and the children’s sci-fi series The Girl from Tomorrow (1990).

He then returned to Britain, where he became a busy character actor on screen. He went from bit parts, such as a train guard in Cracker (1993), a reporter in Prime Suspect 5 (1996), a bus driver in The Lakes (1997) and a meat seller in Dockers (1999), to a regular role in Russell T Davies’s groundbreaking drama series Queer As Folk (1999-2000), playing Bernard Thomas, the older sarcastic character among the friends in Manchester’s gay village.

Before playing Shadrach Dingle, he appeared in Emmerdale briefly as a rugby coach, Baz Bradstone (1998). In Coronation Street, he played the photographer at Betty Turpin’s wedding to Billy Williams (1995) and a Radio Weatherfield DJ (2000).

Devine’s heavy drinking and smoking led to a decline in his health in later years. He was living in a caravan park in Southport at the time of his death, which was not reported until four months later.