John Henshaw
Birthday: Born in 1951-01-01 in Manchester, England, UK
Deathday: Alive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. John Henshaw (born 1951, Ancoats, Manchester) is a British actor famed for his roles as Ken the landlord in Early Doors, Wilf Bradshaw in Born and Bred and PC Roy Bramwell in The Cops. Henshaw was born one of 12 children. He grew up in Ancoats, Manchester's "Little Italy" community. He was a refuse collector for ten years before deciding to become an actor at the age of 40. His first big break in acting was as a minder to Robert Lindsay's character Michael Murray in the acclaimed Channel 4 series, G.B.H. Other TV credits include The Royle Family, The Visit, Life on Mars, whilst film credits include the Steve Coogan comedy The Parole Officer, the Bert Trautmann biopic The Keeper, and the Ken Loach films Looking For Eric and The Angels' Share. Henshaw is chairman of the 24:7 Theatre Festival, an annual festival of new writing for theatre based in Manchester. Description above from the Wikipedia article John Henshaw, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
Early Doors
Character: Ken Dixon
A sitcom set in a small pub in Manchester, “The Grapes”, where daily life is bound up in the issues of love, loneliness, and blocked urinals. Regular drinkers Joe and Duffy pass the time with landlord Ken and his police officer cronies....
The Bill
Character:
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters....
Heartbeat
Character: Guard
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines....
Life on Mars
Character: Ted Bannister
A detective chief inspector from 2006 is investigating a serial killer when he is knocked over by a speeding car. Waking up, he finds himself mysteriously transported back in time to 1973. Initially struggling to come to terms with his situation, he has to come to terms with the old-fashioned technology and attitude of the day, while figuring out how he came to be trapped in the past....
Born and Bred
Character:
Born and Bred is a light-hearted British drama series that aired on BBC One from 2002 to 2005. Created by Chris Chibnall and Nigel McCrery, Born and Bred's cast was led by James Bolam and Michael French, who play a father and son who run a cottage hospital in Ormston, a fictional Lancashire village in the 1950s. Bolam and French's characters are later replaced by characters played by Richard Wilson and Oliver Milburn....
The Cops
Character: Roy
Set in and around Stanton, a faceless and grim Northern enclave, The Cops depicts the daily grind for a group of policemen and women out on the beat as they interact, and sometimes clash, with the local community....
The Visit
Character: Dad
The Visit is a British television programme starring Iain McKee, John Henshaw and Steve Edge. This comedy is set entirely in the visiting room of the prison HMP Radford Hill, where cunning and mischievous inmates do dodgy drug deals and snatch conjugal rights whilst their loved ones visit. All this activity happens under the watchful gaze of a bunch of bored and lazy Prison Officers doing the bare minimum to get the job done. The BBC revealed The Visit is part of a series trilogy with I'm With...
Cutting It
Character: Bruce Gutteridge
Allie Henshall and Gavin Ferraday are partners in love and business. They own Henshall Ferraday hair salon, where Allie's sisters Darcey and Sydney work alongside them. As Allie and Gavin consider taking over a vacant property across the road, they are rocked by the news that a rival hairdresser has bought it. To make matters worse, Allie discovers that the new salon, Blade Runner, is run by her ex, Finn, and his wife, Mia Bevan. Finn fathered the child Allie claimed to have aborted. He left her...
Johnny and the Bomb
Character: Councillor Seeley
Johnny Maxwell stumbles upon a time machine when he helps an old woman, but little does he know that his journeys back to 1941 cause a chain of events which alter history. Johnny and his friends must go back in time to reverse the changes and save his own existence....
Documentary Now!
Character:
Loving parodies of some of the world's best-known documentaries. Each episode is shot in a different style of documentary filmmaking, and honors some of the most important stories that didn't actually happen....
The Full Monty
Character: Bus Driver
The Full Monty gang is back after 25 years, swapping their stage costumes for dognapping, racing pigeons, and one very unconventional hostage situation. Gaz might be older, but he's no wiser. And his best friend, Dave, refuses to get sucked into any more of his antics. But when tragedy strikes, the whole Monty gang must pull together for a common purpose: to honor an old friend....
South Riding
Character: Alfred Huggins
The lives and loves of a 1930s Yorkshire town explored in a passionate tale of politics in small places. South Riding charts the story of Sarah Burton's homecoming to Yorkshire in 1934 after twenty years teaching in London and the Empire. After a fiery interview with a conservative interview panel, outspoken Sarah takes up her first headmistress-ship at Kiplington High School for Girls, determined to demonstrate to her new pupils that the future is theirs for the taking....
Father Brown
Character: Barny Butterfield
Father Brown is based on G. K. Chesterton's detective stories about a Catholic priest who doubles as an amateur detective in order to try and solve mysteries....
The Royle Family
Character: Roger Kavanagh
British comedy series focusing on the lives of a working-class family in Manchester who love the TV....
Casualty
Character: Lenny Adams
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives....
See No Evil: The Moors Murders
Character: DCS Arthur Benfield
See No Evil: The Moors Murders is a British two-part television serial directed by Christopher Menaul. It was produced by Granada Television and broadcast on ITV during May 2006. It tells the story of the Moors Murders, which were committed during the 1960s by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, from the view of Hindley's sister Maureen Smith and her husband David....
The Second Coming
Character: Clive Saxon
Video store clerk Steve Baxter realises that he is in fact the Son of God. He has just a few days to find the human race's Third Testament and thus avert the Apocalypse....
Cracker
Character: Quarry Foreman
The wise-cracking Fitz is a brilliant but flawed criminal psychologist with a remarkable insight into the criminal mind....
By Any Means
Character: Stan Bond
By Any Means follows a clandestine unit living on the edge and playing the criminal elite at their own game, existing in the grey area between the letter of the law and true justice....
The Long Shadow
Character: Mike Dugdale
Dramatizing one of the most infamously notorious and shocking serial killer cases in the world, the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, commonly dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, between October 1975 and January 1981, South Yorkshire police undertook the biggest manhunt in British criminal history. The search for Sutcliffe lasted five years, involved over a thousand officers and changed the way the British police worked forever....
Cilla
Character: John White
Three-part biopic of the Liverpudlian songbird who would later find fame and fortune. It tells of her rocky road to fame and captures the essence of 1960s Liverpool....
Boat Story
Character: Nigel
Two hard-up strangers stumble across a haul of cocaine on a shipwrecked boat. After agreeing to sell it and split the cash, they become entangled with police, masked hitmen, and a sharp-suited gangster known as 'The Tailor'....
G.B.H.
Character: Murray's Minder
GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray, the Militant tendency-supporting Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson, the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council — in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts ...
Going Postal
Character: Mr Pony
Moist von Lipwig is a con-man with a particular talent-- he is utterly unremarkable. When his execution is stayed in Terry Pratchett's remarkable Discworld, he must work off his debt to society as the land's head Postman. Things are not always as they seem, and soon Lipwig is delivering mail for his very life!...
Born and Bred
Character: Wilf Bradshaw
Born and Bred is a light-hearted British drama series that aired on BBC One from 2002 to 2005. Created by Chris Chibnall and Nigel McCrery, Born and Bred's cast was led by James Bolam and Michael French, who play a father and son who run a cottage hospital in Ormston, a fictional Lancashire village in the 1950s. Bolam and French's characters are later replaced by characters played by Richard Wilson and Oliver Milburn....
Heartbeat
Character: Albert Ross
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines....
Midsomer Murders
Character: Arthur Potts
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty. ...
Red Riding
Character: Bill Hadley
Thrilling trilogy of films based on David Peace's cult noir novels about Yorkshire during the 1970s and 80s: a world of paranoia, corruption and the terrifying legacy of the Ripper murders....
Movie Credits
Early Doors - Live
Character: Ken
Early Doors was a TV hit when the sitcom was originally aired on the BBC in 2003 and gained cult status over its twelve-episode run. The cast took the show on a sell-out tour in 2018 and 2019 and have now released a recording of the live show to raise vital funds for The Christie Charitable Fund....
Starter for 10
Character: Des
In 1985, against the backdrop of Thatcherism, Brian Jackson enrolls in the University of Bristol, a scholarship boy from seaside Essex with a love of knowledge for its own sake and a childhood spent watching University Challenge, a college quiz show. At Bristol he tries out for the Challenge team and falls under the spell of Alice, a lovely blond with an extensive sexual past....
A Bit of Tom Jones?
Character: Bar Owner
In a late night bar, Henry is approached by a mysterious woman who offers to sell him the severed "manhood" of Wales' greatest vocal entertainer. Believing he can make a fortune selling the infamous appendage on to obsessive fans, Henry stumps up the cash. To help find the right buyer, Henry teams up with his slightly dodgy best friend Teddy and together the two head off on an insane journey that leads them deep into the secret world of celebrity body part trading....
Looking for Eric
Character: Meatballs
A man trying to put his life back on track gets some advice from an unexpected benefactor -- the ex-footballer Eric Cantona....
The Angels' Share
Character: Harry
Narrowly avoiding jail, new dad Robbie vows to turn over a new leaf. A visit to a whisky distillery inspires him and his mates to seek a way out of their hopeless lives....
The Ringer
Character: Danny
A son is reunited with his long lost father for the first time. You might imagine it's time to discover everything about where he's come from and where he's going. But he's about to get a surprise......
Wolf Manor
Character: Thaddeus Saxon (the landlord)
Shooting a vampire flick in an old, abandoned manor house should have worked like a dream, but the film crew is out of their depth, over schedule and desperate to get the shoot finished and go home. However, as the moon turns full, the nightmare begins. Blood flows and the body count rises as cast and crew meet the manor’s resident werewolf…...
This Is Not a Love Song
Character: Arthur
Heaton and Spike are the unlikeliest pair: two loners who have found each other. When Spike commits a terrible crime, Heaton decides to stand by him - an act of astonishing, almost foolhardy loyalty. There begins a chase across a vast Northern landscape of moors, rivers and dark woods, the increasingly exhausted fugitives being hunted not by the police but by a posse of farmers intent on revenge. No ordinary chase film, This Is Not a Love Song is a love story trapped inside the body of a thrille...
Confessions of a Diary Secretary
Character: John Prescott
Funny film concerning John Prescott's affair with Tracey Temple...
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974
Character: Bill Hadley
Yorkshire, 1974. Fear, mistrust and institutionalised police corruption are running riot. Rookie journalist Eddie Dunford is determined to search for the truth in an increasingly complex maze of lies and deceit surrounding the police investigation into a series of child abductions. When young Clare Kemplay goes missing, Eddie and his colleague, Barry, persuade their editor to let them investigate links with two similar abductions that draw them into a deadly world of secrecy, intimidation, shock...
When Saturday Comes
Character: M.C
Jimmy Muir comes from a typical gritty, northern town where there are only two options: working down the pit or in a factory. But Jimmy has other ideas - he dreams of becoming a professional footballer. Confronted by a bitter and unsupportive father, hard drinking friends and a lifetime of bad habits...has Jimmy the will to achieve his ultimate goal?...
Grow Your Own
Character: Charlie
A refugee family are given an allotment plot and are met with suspicion by the people who have worked the gardens for years...
The Parole Officer
Character: Cochran
A hapless parole officer is framed for murder by a crooked police chief. To prove his innocence he must entice his former clients away from the law abiding lives they are now living to recover the evidence that will save him....
Happy Now
Character: Pete Copsey
All grown up and gunning for political power in a small North Wales community, Glen Marcus and his best mate harbour a dark secret which seems to be coming back to haunt them. But can the daughter of Tina Trent, a local woman just returned from Alaska, be the same girl the two lads buried fourteen years earlier? Only local policeman Max Bracchi can solve the case with the help of a wrongly accused tramp, Tin Man....
Swallows and Amazons
Character: Harbour Master
Four children dream of escaping the tedium of a summer holiday with their mother. When finally given permission to camp on their own on an island in the middle of a vast lake, they are overjoyed. But when they get there they discover they may not be alone… The battle for ownership of a lonely island teaches them the skills of survival, the value of friendship and the importance of holding your nerve....
Dancin' Thru the Dark
Character: Doorman
Linda's out on her hen night, her fiance is out on his stag night. Linda is having major doubts about getting married, when both groups arrive at a club, to find the band fronted by her ex-boyfriend—and the love of her life—Peter. Linda has to decide: Does she stay and settle down, like her friends want her to, or does she chuck it all in and run away with Peter?...
A Street Cat Named Bob
Character: Tube Station Guard
James Bowen, a homeless busker and recovering drug addict, has his life transformed when he meets a stray ginger cat....
6 Days
Character: Metropolitan Police Spokesman
London, England, April 1980. Six terrorists assault the Embassy of Iran and take hostages. For six days, tense negotiations are held while the authorities decide whether a military squad should intervene....
Someone Else
Character: Paul
When thirty-something David isn't working as a photographer at a high-street photo studio he is stressing over his love-life. Torn between his rather-too-agreeable girlfriend Lisa and the exciting but tricky Nina, he has serious decision to make. When he gets it all wrong and loses them both he has to start all over again....
There's Only One Jimmy Grimble
Character: Ken Burley
Jimmy Grimble is a shy Manchester school boy. At school he is constantly being bullied by the other kids, and at home he has to face his mother's new boyfriend. However, through football, and some special boots, he manages to gain the confidence to succeed and leads his school football team towards the final of the local schools cup....
Pin Cushion
Character: Percy
Super close mother Lyn and daughter Iona (Dafty One and Dafty Two) are excited for their new life in a new town. Determined to make a success of things after a tricky start, Iona becomes 'best friends' with Keely, Stacey and Chelsea. Used to being Iona's bestie herself, Lyn feels left out. So Lyn also makes friends with Belinda, her neighbour....
The Keeper
Character: Jack Friar
The story of a man whose love for football, for England and for the love of his life, Margaret, saw him rise from Nazi 'villain' to British hero. Bert Trautmann, the German goalkeeper won over even his harshest opponents by winning the FA Cup Final for Manchester City in 1956 - playing on with a broken neck to secure victory....
The Night Runner
Character: Dennis
Talia runs at night, pushing her fragile heart to the limit. Casey saves lives, a heart surgeon frustrated with red tape. This tragic love story pushes all the boundaries with its controversial look at energy drinks and the affect they have on the heart....
The Man Who Invented Christmas
Character: Butcher / Mr. Fezziwig
In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever....
In Our Name
Character: Frank
Suzy's a British soldier, born and bred, but fitting back into civilian life after fighting in Iraq isn't easy. Haunted by the responsibility she feels for the death of an Iraqi child, she becomes obsessed with the safety of her own daughter, feeling the need to protect her against a threat that doesn't seem to exist. As Suzy's paranoia builds, her behaviour becomes more and more erratic, until finally, she puts her own child in serious danger....
Stan & Ollie
Character: Nobby Cook
With their golden era long behind them, comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy embark on a variety hall tour of Britain and Ireland. Despite the pressures of a hectic schedule, and with the support of their wives Lucille and Ida – a formidable double act in their own right – the pair's love of performing, as well as for each other, endures as they secure their place in the hearts of their adoring public...
The Last British Execution
Character: Marcus Peabody
When an execution is sanctioned in the UK for the first time in almost 50 years, it soon becomes a media circus. The television rights are sold, and it becomes the worlds biggest reality TV show, re-branded as X-Day....
Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday
Character: Glen
What could be better? A footballer's wedding, a week in the sun, a luxury villa in historic Transylvania. It’s the trip of a lifetime for Coronation Street's favourite café owners Roy and Hayley Cropper, until the brash Glen and Verity appear... Opposites don't attract in this chaotic comic caper as the unlikely foursome embark on an adventure neither couple will ever forget. And when Weatherfield hell-raiser Becky McDonald jets in from her honeymoon, the stage is set for mountain mayhem deep in...
I'm Not in Love
Character: Tony
Rob, in his late thirties, needs to decide if he wants to have a baby with his girlfriend Marta, but worries that he’s fallen out of love with her. He asks his seemingly unhappily married friends for advice, who all tell him that he won’t be able to do better so he might as well marry her. But when Rob eventually does propose to Marta, things don't go exactly to plan....
Sunny
Character: Pavlo
After accidentally killing a mutual friend, a hitman is taken into the forest to make amends...
Closer to the Moon
Character: Judge
A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of bank robbers to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie....
The Royle Family: Behind the Sofa
Character: Self
Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash discuss the creation of The Royle Family, with a look behind the scenes at the production of the show and interviews with the cast....
Silky Hotel
Character: Jim Knightshade
From the billowing gauze of The Meatloaf Suite to the twinkling lights on The Kem & Amber terrace, every detail of Silky Hotel has been designed with obsessive care by romance gurus Jim and Barbara. This is the only hotel where you'll find the original tent peg from Brokeback Mountain and the air is infused with the delicate aroma of oysters. Prepare to smell the love. But Silky Hotel is in trouble. Guests don't turn up like they used to, and unbeknownst to Jim, the debt collectors are closing ...