A former Coronation Street and Emmerdale star has been banned from teaching after ‘acting out his sexual fantasies’ and flirting with pupils at a £39,000-a-year boarding school.
Anthony Bessick, 57, who was a drama coach at Tring Park School of Performing Arts under his real name Anthony Cooke, also sent inappropriate messages to three schoolgirls, a teaching misconduct panel heard.
He had four roles on the Cobbles – as gangster Lewis Knox, Street Cars cabbie Vernon Bradshaw, dying hospital patient Mike Scott and fireman Vince Lonsdale.
The actor played Scott again on Harry Hill’s TV Burp, poking fun at his character’s death scene.
Bessick, who specialises in ‘Bad Boy’ roles, also appeared in The Royal, Emmerdale, Boy Meets Girl, The Street, Kay Mellor’s The Chase, and Truth Dare Kiss.
Tring has produced stars such as Down Abbey actress Lily James, Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley, The X Factor singer Ella Henderson, and Life After Life’s Jessica Brown Findlay.
The panel heard the Bolton-based actor was involved in filmmaking with pupils and would comment on their performances via social media and text.
But with three girls, Pupil A, Pupil B and Pupil C, the conversations took a sinister turn.
On the night of a school ball in July 2016, he ‘took Pupil A to the staff room and offered her beer’, according to colleagues who interrupted him.
He also messaged her, begging her to indulge his sexual fantasies of ‘being squashed’, ‘crushed’, and ‘sat or stood on top of’, teaching watchdogs found.
While living on the grounds as school caretaker, he messaged Pupil B: ‘You should come down for a ghost hunting sesh. Not too bad after a few shots of voddy.’
