SEAN Maguire has opened up about his time as a soap star and why he asked EastEnders bosses not to kill his character off by suicide.
The 45-year-old shot to fame as Tegs Ratcliffe in Grange Hill before landing the part of Aidan Brosnan in the BBC1 soap in 1993.
But Sean has revealed bosses planned to kill Aidan off during an explosive Christmas Day episode – by having the character take his own life.
Appearing on the Celebrity Catch Up podcast, he said: “I got quite a lot of letters from young people, especially young people that were having a tough time, and when they told me the character was going to commit suicide, I said to them, ‘Please don’t.
“‘I’m happy to leave in any fashion you want, but please don’t have him commit suicide’. Because inevitably there are suicides around Christmas – sadly sometimes they’re young people and I know that the tabloids will say it’s a copycat death and they copied me or something, that’s possible – and I couldn’t deal with that.
“My conscience couldn’t deal with that. That would break me if I felt in any way responsible for something like that.”
Sean continued: “I said, ‘Please find another way. I’m not telling you how to run your show, but please don’t do that. Don’t do that on Christmas Day. It’ll ruin the country’s Christmas’.
“And they were like, ‘No, that’s what we’re doing’. And I was like, ‘OK, well I’ve voiced my opinion’.”
But in a twist of fate, a real-life near-death motorcycle accident meant Sean was unable to film the intended storyline.
“And then as luck, bad luck, would have it, I broke my leg a week or two later in a… I was doing a stupid motorcylce thing that I shouldn’t have been doing,” Sean said.
“I broke my leg very, very badly and very nearly killed myself, very nearly actually died in the motorcyle accident, had I hit the wall differently.
“If I’d have hit it with my head I’d be dead for sure, because I hit the wall at about 50mph.
“And because I broke my leg I couldn’t walk and because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t jump off a building. So fate sort of stepped in and then Aidan just went off back to Ireland or something, I think.”
