Peter Baldwin (Corrie's Derek Wilton) dies age 82

Peter Baldwin, who played Derek Wilton on Coronation Street, has passed away today.  He was 82 years old.

Peter joined Coronation Street as salesman Derek in 1976. Derek was the on / off partner and later husband of Mavis Wilton from 1988 until his death in 1997.

After his character on Coronation Street was killed off in 1997, actor Peter Baldwin opened a toy shop in Covent Garden, London.

In 2013 Peter gave a good interview to the Express about playing Derek on Corrie and his life after he left the show.  You can read it here.

Derek and Mavis will always be fondly remembered. One of their major storylines was the stolen garden gnome and of course there was Derek's friendship with Norris (who always called him Dirk and was once wed to Derek's ex-wife Angela too).

Derek was killed off in Corrie after the appointment of new producer Brian Park in 1997, who sanctioned the removal of five main characters, including Derek Wilton. “Derek was probably past his sell-by date,” recalls Park. I had to see the poor actor, Peter Baldwin, at 9am on the day I started and he thought I was seeing the cast in alphabetical order. But it wasn’t B for Baldwin. It was B for b*****ed.”

So the friendship between the Wiltons and Norris became somewhat strained, to say the least. Norris got his own back though. When Derek took in two gnomes – Arthur and Guinevere, Arthur kept disappearing and sent postcards home from around the world (although strangely, not from here). Derek then received a severed gnome’s ear with a ransom note for fifty chocolate doubloons so he lay in wait for the criminal behind some bushes and was arrested on suspicion of being a peeping Tom. On the eve of Norris’ wedding to Angela, Norris got drunk and admitted to best man Derek that he was the one who’d stolen the gnome. In revenge, Derek took Norris to the wrong church, which made him late for the wedding – and Angela, well, she was not best pleased.
- See more at: http://www.corrieblog.tv/2007/04/favourite_corri_5.html#sthash.qp3iPmyl.dpuf

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