William Roache said there were only a couple of times in more than six decades on Coronation Street when a storyline did not work for him, including one in which Ken Barlow was meant to hand over his illegitimate child to the boy's mother. Roache, 94, said the scene asked Ken to accept a change he could not make feel true.

He first appeared as Ken in Coronation Street's inaugural episode on December 9, 1960, and secured the world record as the longest-serving soap actor in 2010. Looking back on the disputed plot, he said the problem came when he took a storyline personally and felt it was not Ken but him doing it under the name of Ken. When the script had Ken looking after the child on his own, then bringing in the mother to take the child away and expecting him to say okay, Roache stopped it. “I'm sorry, I just can't do that,” he recalled saying. The producer answered, “I'm sorry, it's a bit sudden, I realise it.”

Roache said the shift was too late to make and called it a big wrench. For him, the role has long since passed beyond performance. “It's pseudo-method I would say,” he said, adding, “In my book I don't act, I just do, and I believe it. That's it.”

That closeness helps explain why he still speaks about Ken as if he belongs to him, while stopping short of claiming ownership. “I feel I'm Ken's protector, I feel I'm looking after him. His caretaker rather than protector,” he said. The long-running actor also said memorising his lines has become second nature after decades in the role, and that he has no desire to leave Weatherfield.

His comments land at a time when his place in the soap is already fixed in television history. Roache has played Ken Barlow for several decades and has no plans to retire soon, making his view of the character unusually personal for an actor who has outlasted generations of cast changes. “I try not to think about the years, I just think about getting on and enjoying life,” he said. “I would want for the future just more of the same.”

The answer to what comes next is plain enough from Roache's own words: he intends to stay, and Ken Barlow remains a part he still wants to inhabit rather than hand back.