football team in the village of Islip, Oxfordshire, where the Cope family was then living. Other screenwriting credits include A Sharp Intake of Breath. Cope featured in three episodes of Minder playing different characters: newly released prisoner Arthur Stubbs in "Bury My Half at Waltham Green"; 'Scooter' in "Waiting for Goddard"; and police informer Phelan in "Bring Me the Head of Arthur Daley". He later appeared in the Doctor Who story Warriors' Gate (in 1981), and guest-starred in four episodes of Casualty, as well as taking roles in Juliet Bravo,''The Bill, Waking the Dead, A Touch of Frost and Kavanagh QC. In 1984, Cope starred in Bootle Saddles, an ill-conceived surreal sitcom about a failing themed 'cowboy village' on the outskirts of Merseyside. He played the lead character Percy James, who was passionate about the park despite the poor financial returns. The series appeared to be less a parody and more a sort of homage to 1950s and 1960s westerns, with episodes structured loosely around epics like High Noon and The Magnificent Seven. The characters rarely strayed out of their diegetic cowboy personas, despite the contemporary setting. The series was axed after one season. In 1995, he appeared in the same episode of Out of the Blue as his daughter Martha. In 1997, Cope played dodgy ex-copper Charlie Fairclough alongside David Jason in an episode of A Touch of Frost titled "True Confessions". From 1999 to 2002 he played Ray Hilton in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside. Cope was offered a cameo role in the 2000–2001 revival of Randall and Hopkirk starring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, but turned it down. He did, however, feature on the "Behind the Scenes" section of the Series 1 DVD, wishing the cast of the remake well. He also provided the foreword to a Randall and Hopkirk retrospective book (by Geoff Tibballs), published in 1994. In addition, an 'Appreciation', written by Cope, was included in Annette André's 2018 autobiography Where have I been all My Life?. Cope played Neville Harding in 2004's "Shadowplay" (Series 4, episodes 11 and 12 of Waking the Dead). In 2008, Cope's Coronation Street character Jed Stone returned to the ITV soap after 42 years' absence, appearing as part of a storyline involving property developer Tony Gordon. The character was kept onscreen for several months before being written out again, and marked Kenneth Cope's final acting gig. Personal life