Frederick Feast (5 October 1929 – 25 June 1999) was a British television actor, best remembered for playing the role of Fred Gee in Coronation Street. Early life He attended the Scarborough High School for Boys, Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, and served as a physical training instructor for the Parachute Regiment with the rank of sergeant. He worked as a variety artist and stand-up comic at the Windmill Theatre and appeared in summer seasons and pantomimes. Other occupations included driving instructor, butcher, trawlerman, dolphin trainer, computer systems analyst, nightclub owner, personal shopper, publican and maître d' at a Michelin star Algarve restaurant. Early roles Feast acted in numerous television dramas throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, including the BAFTA winning ITV play Another Sunday and Sweet FA, written by Jack Rosenthal. He also had guest roles in a string of popular serials including Nearest and Dearest, Country Matters, South Riding and the mining drama Sam (1973), where he played the character Chopper for two episodes. He appeared in the Ken Loach directed wartime series Days of Hope (1975), written by Jim Allen. He also appeared in Crown Court. Coronation Street Feast was best known for his role as the Rovers Return's potman Fred Gee in the soap opera Coronation Street, a role he played from 1975 to 1984. In 1983, Feast took time off sick at a moment's notice, causing the Coronation Street script writers to have to re-draft 12 episodes (then the equivalent of six weeks of programmes). He claimed to be depressed, had trouble remembering his lines, and suffered from bouts of uncontrollable weeping. Producer Bill Podmore later said that if he had come to him and explained this in the first place, his role could have been temporarily reduced; appearing as a barman in the Rovers, the focal point of Coronation Street, means that an actor tends to be in more scenes than other characters. Podmore described Feast as "earthy", and Fred Gee as being a toned-down screen version of Fred Feast. When Feast next took time off, it was permanent. On the show, Fred Gee had gone from being an unlikable loser to an outright buffoon, getting the sack from Rovers landlord Billy Walker (Kenneth Farrington) after punching him in the face, unable to see that Walker had goaded him into it so he could sack him without having to pay him any redundancy. Business