Who is Alan Halsall in ITV I'm A Celebrity 2024?
by Jessica Sansome · Manchester Evening NewsAlan Halsall is among the ten new famous faces heading into the jungle for this year's run of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.
The Coronation Street star was expected to appear in the hit ITV reality show last year but had to pull out after having to undergo surgery and rehabilitation for an ACL injury.
This year, however, he is well and truly in as one of the 10 celebrities set to face up to three weeks of gruelling bush tucker trials, sleeping rough in camp and potentially eating for little depending on how well they do in the group does in the trials.
READ MORE: I'm A Celebrity 2024 full line-up confirmed with days to go until new series
As for Alan, fans will probably best know him for playing Tyrone Dobbs in Corrie for the past 26 years. He made his Weatherfield debut in November 1998 as the delinquent son of Jackie Dobbs. At sixteen, the character left his mother and her difficult ways behind and trained as an apprentice mechanic under Kevin Webster and 10 years later ended up buying half the business.
Throughout the year's Corrie fans have seen Tyrone's storylines focused on his relationships, starting with first love Maria Sutherland, now Windass, before finding on-and-off love with Fiz Stape. But there was also the case of his doomed marriage to Molly Compton and the storyline which saw him suffer shocking domestic violence at the hands of his fiancée Kirsty Soames (Natalie Gumede).
While he's well known to fans for playing Tyrone, one of Alan’s early roles was playing Ollie for five episodes in Children’s Ward between 1997 and 1998. The 39-year-old also had roles in Queer as Folk, Heartbeat and The Cops before he stepped onto the cobbles in 1998.
(Image: Granada Television)
Away from the Salford-based set, Alan married former Coronation Street and current Hollyoaks actress Lucy-Jo Hudson in 2009. They welcomed daughter Sienna-Rae three years later. However, the couple split in March 2016 and divorced in 2018, but continue to co-parent their now 11-year-old daughter.
Alan has more recently become single following the end of his relationship with former Corrie co-star Tisha Merry. The Salford actor had previously revealed his relationship with Tisha developed naturally and started out as friendship. Alan said he and Tisha lived less than a mile away from each other in Worsley and found they had a lot in common as their former romance blossomed.
Meanwhile, speaking about heading into the jungle, Alan, 42, said: "It feels like the worst kept secret ever! It was a bit of a shock when I got the knee injury last year and whilst I am signed off surgically, I still had several months of physio ahead of me.
"But a top football professional like Rodri, for example, would take about a year to get back to playing football (after something like I’ve had) and he has the best medical staff in the world. So for your average Joe like me it is going to take longer."
Those joining Alan in the jungle are Dancing on Ice judge Oti Mabuse, TV presenter GK Barry, singer Tulisa, WAG Coleen Rooney, radio DJ Melvin Odoom, Loose Women's Jane Moore, musician Danny Jones, former boxer Barry McGuigan and radio presenter Dean McCullough.