Tim Healy

The younger son of Timothy Malcolm Healy and Sadie Wilson, as a young lad Tim Healy's family lived in Coulson Street, Benwell, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where his mother had a small shop. When he was 10 years old, they moved to Ouston. He was educated at Pelton Modern School, where he obtained 2 Grade 4 CSEs. At age 16, at his father's insistence, he got an apprenticeship with Birtley Caterpillar earning £26 a week but hated it. He enrolled at Durham Technical College but flunked all his exams except for O level drama. and went on to study A levels in the subject and started to tour the clubs doing a stand up comedy act. making his debut at a club in Sunderland. At that time you could tour all the clubs easily in a year without playing any of them twice. His gift for acting was inherited from his father who was a good amateur actor who wanted to be a professional but WWII prevented this. After marrying and starting a family, his father's hopes for an acting career ended. Nonetheless, when Tim started doing the clubs his father would wait up for him to find out how well he'd done. As a child, Tim appeared in a number of Birtley Amateur Operatic Society productions but his career really started in the form of a court jester at Langley Castle in Northumberland. He played such characters as Robin Hood, Dracula, and Old King Cole. Eventually he wound up running the productions, writing all the scripts, directing the shows, hiring the bands and more. With a friend he formed a double act called Unit Two, which was followed by television and stage work, and a three year stint in the mid-1970s as a stand up club comic. His big break cane in 1983 when he got the role of site foreman in the television comedy drama series 'Auf Wiedersen Pet alongside fellow Geordies Keven Whately and Jimmy Nail which ran for 5 series between 1983 and 2004. He married actress Denise Welch in 1988 and has two sons, Matthew, who is the lead singer in the band 'The 1975' and Louis who is an actor, Tim's brother, who is younger than him, is a child care officer in Stanley, Co Durham.