Byker Groves legends look very different after quitting fame for normal jobs
BYKER Grove fans were stunned as Billy Fane and Lyndyann Barrass looked unrecognisable since their time on popular kids show as they appeared on Loose Women today.
The CBBC drama launched 32 years ago and entertained British kids for 17 years – until the Geordie youth club shut its doors in 2006.
Billy, 77 and Lyndyann, 47, looked a far cry from their characters on the show, nearly 30 years on.
Billy played the mega-moustached youth club leader Geoff for ten years, while Lyndyann enjoyed four years playing the red-haired youngster, Spuggy.
The pair joined the Loose ladies on the ITV show on Thursday.
Coleen Nolan asked them: “What do you feel about the show coming back?”
Lyndyann replied: “It’s exciting, it’s very reminiscent and very bizarre walking down the street again and people say ‘it’s Spuggy’.
“I think it’s the flame red hair, I feel old now.”
Coleen then asked: “Have you stayed in contact with anyone…Ant or Dec?”
The former TV star said: “I’ve spoken to Declan since, he said hello everybody and wants a nice picture to send.”
Denise Welch said: “If they asked you to go back and did a Bobby Ewing on you wold you come out the shower?”
Lyndyann replied: “Yeah absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt.”
Host Jane Moore then asked: “You both made the decision to leave showbiz and you’ve sort of got proper jobs now, tell us what you do.”
Billy explained that he qualified as a teacher for adult people with dyslexia and went to teach in a young offenders institution.
Then, at the age of 58, Bill passed a postgraduate education course at Hull University with a distinction and has now landed himself a new role in charge of teaching at six prisons throughout the north of England.
Meanwhile, Lyndyann said: “At the moment I have my own cleaning company, Dusty Springclean. But I never actually came out of it as such, I got married, I had kids, I got divorced. Life happens.”
Geoff was almost a part of the furniture by the time he was killed off in a gas explosion in the year 2000.
The actor went on to star in hit movie Billy Elliot as the rumpled Mr Braithwaite, who plays the piano at the lad’s ballet lessons.
He’s also appeared in panto and had a This Your Life style segment devoted to him on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. Billy appeared in countless pantomimes across the region as well as in Heartbeat.
While Lyndyann played straight-talking youngster, Spuggy.
But it was her role on Byker Grove which quickly ended her time as an actress a few years later.
She told The Sun: “I appeared in a few one-off dramas, but I’d been typecast as the redhead from ‘that Geordie show’ and struggled to find work.
“Aged 21, I joined a band called Angel, but we weren’t successful and I left after a year
It comes after Ant, 47, and Dec, also 47, who first found fame on the hit BBC teen series as PJ and Duncan, revealed they are reviving Byker Grove.
And in a new video, they revealed they were rebooting the show, with Dec saying: “Byker Grove will always be very special to us as the show which gave us our break, so we are beyond excited.
“We are looking forward to bringing this fresh incarnation to a whole new generation as well as those who remember it as fondly as we do.”