Roache ‘not interested in gratuitous sex or minors’

Coronation Street star William Roache was looking for love rather than “gratuitous sex” amid the collapse of his first marriage, he told a court.

Roache, 81, told a jury he cheated on his wife with “a series of relationships” in the mid-to-late 1960s at a time when he is alleged to have committed two rapes and four indecent assaults.

The offences involving the five complainants aged 16 and under were said to have taken place between 1965 and 1971.