Bryan Mosley (25 August 1931 – 9 February 1999) was a British actor, best known for his role as grocer Alf Roberts in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Early life Mosley was born in Leeds, an only child, to Agnes Basquill, a print worker, and Jimmy Mosley, a labourer at a dye factory. He attended Leeds Central High School and made his stage debut, aged 10, as the back end of a cow in the pantomime Cinderella. He modelled for clothes catalogues and held a childhood ambition to become a missionary. Instead, aged 13, Mosley won a scholarship to Leeds College of Art, where he studied from 1944 to 1946, and subsequently worked as a commercial artist. He also worked in a bookshop, as a drama teacher and sold encyclopaedias door-to-door. In 1950, Mosley's father, a smoker and heavy drinker, died from a heart attack. His mother subsequently remarried, a marriage which Mosley did not approve of, and he remained estranged from his mother until her death. In 1952, after national service in the RAF, working in air traffic control just outside Newcastle and in Scotland, Mosley trained as an actor at the Bradford Civic Theatre and Esme Church's Northern Theatre School. He then toured with the New Pilgrim Players, playing in churches, abbeys, pubs and prisons, before working in repertory theatre in York, Perth, Derby and Harrogate. Coronation Street Mosley joined the cast of Coronation Street in February 1961 (episode 18), and made recurrent appearances until 1963, as Post Office worker Alfred "Alf" Roberts, a colleague of Frank Barlow. He returned to the series briefly in 1967, before re-joining as a regular cast member in 1971. Alf became best known as the owner of the Corner Shop, local councillor and twice Mayor of Weatherfield in 1973 and 1994. His character was married three times: initially to Phyllis Plant (1946–1970), who did not appear onscreen; secondly to Renee Bradshaw (1978–1980); and latterly to Audrey Roberts, from 1985 onwards. Mosley's appearances in the soap opera became less frequent following a serious heart attack in 1997, causing him to take eight months off from the show. After 37 years, and almost 2,000 episodes, his character was to be written out of the serial. Mosley, upset at the prospect of his character's demise, refused to act out his final dying scene, until Granada bosses offered him ten times his usual rate