Mark Casey

Mark Casey
Occupation	Mechanic Garage owner
Born	15th October 1969
Father	Tom Casey
Mother	Jean Casey
First appearance	3rd April 1989
Last appearance	11th November 1991
Duration	1989-1991
Number of appearances	106
Played by	Stuart Wolfenden

Mark Casey was a young mechanic who worked under Kevin Webster at his father Tom's garage from 1989 to 1990.

For his 21st birthday, Mark was given the garage, and in 1991 he sacked Kevin for doing foreigners. Without Kevin to keep him right, the inexperienced businessman ran the garage into the ground within a year.

Biography

Mark Casey was born on 15th October 1969. He was the only child of Tom and Jean Casey, businesspeople and owners of Casey's Autos in Weatherfield. At Weatherfield High, he was always getting into trouble, and once took the wheels off his teacher's car as a prank.

At 19, Mark's two main passions were cars and women. He had two years experience working in garages and was a skilled mechanic but lacked discipline. When Tom bought Tilsley's Garage in Albert Street which was managed by the late Brian Tilsley's hired hand, Kevin Webster, he sent Mark to work there under Kevin, hoping that it would be an education for his son.

Working for the family business, Mark thought he had it easy and chose his own working hours, taking any excuse to skive off. After his first day at the job, he went along with Kevin and Sally to Shirley Armitage's party at the Corner Shop flat, where he showed off his girlfriend Sharon Priestley and met Jenny Bradley, an old school friend. Sharon commanded his attentions again the next day as he left work early to take her out, promising Kevin he would make up the hours. With anybody else, Kevin would have put his foot down but as Mark was a Casey he let him off with it. However, when Tom came to check on how things were going and saw Kevin struggling by himself, he insisted that Mark not be given special treatment. Kevin followed his instructions by sacking Mark for his lateness and threatened to leave the garage if Tom reinstated him, although he ultimately took Mark back on himself, missing his cheek.

Once he started taking his job seriously, Mark became good friends with Kevin. In June 1989, he shared his interest in banger-racing with him. Mark picked out an old Escort at Casey's Autos which Jean agreed to sell to the men for £600. After doing it up at the garage, Mark, Kevin and Sally had a race-off to decide who would get to drive it at the racetrack. Although Mark and Kevin were just humouring Sally, who hadn't yet passed her driving test, by letting her participate, she won the time trials by default when Kevin stalled the car and Mark crashed. Mark and Kevin did everything they could to put Sally off driving the banger, including not telling her that there was a woman's race, but she acquitted herself admirably by passing her test at the first attempt and getting Mark to practice with her at the track. During the lesson, Mark stepped out of the car to chat a girl up and Sally drove off, whereupon a faulty differential caused the car to go out of control and crash. Sally escaped with a broken ankle but her injury brought an end to Mark and Kevin's banger-racing craze.

In May 1990, Mark started chasing Jenny's student housemate Flick Khan. To impress her, he threatened to thump their unwanted lodger Rodney Whitworth unless he left No.7. Flick was turned off by his heavy-handed actions, but when she apologised to Mark for being harsh on him, he asked her out on a date. Flick considered Mark vain and immature but, as he'd done her a favour by getting rid of Rod, she felt obliged to accept. The "date" consisted of going out with Mark's friends and eating at a service station. Afterwards, Flick told Mark that she wasn't interested in him, but he tried to win her round by giving her a gold necklace which he'd found on the garage floor. When Kevin informed him that customer Mel Bailey had mislaid a necklace in the garage, Mark was ordered to retrieve it, but Flick had already donated it to a charity shop. As the Baileys were threatening to take legal action against the garage, Mark was forced to buy it back from the charity shop for £35 and return it to its owner.

1990: Tom and Jean Casey hand Casey's Garage over to Mark on his 21st birthday

Mark celebrated his 21st birthday later that year with a party at the Belstaff Hotel organised by his parents. As a present, Tom signed the garage over to Mark; he was now the boss. The news came as a blow to Kevin who, after one day working under his former assistant, resigned from the garage. Though harsh words were exchanged, Mark didn't want to lose Kevin as a friend and began to wish he'd never been given the garage. When Sally made Kevin see that Mark had done nothing wrong, he made up with Mark and agreed to return to work.

Jenny Bradley hadn't looked twice at Mark but changed her tune once he became his own boss. When Jenny bought him a walkman, Mark went out with her. After a few weeks, finding that he could never be alone with Jenny at No.7 he worked on persuading her to oust her housemate Angie Freeman, although Jenny put him off.

In January 1991, when Jenny was doing a "Pomme de Lite" promo for Newton & Ridley's new cider at the Adelphi Hotel, Mark surprised her there and saw Steph Barnes with Robert Weston, whom Jenny passed off as Steph's bit on the side. Mark informed Des that his wife was playing away, but when Mark found out that Kevin had been doing foreigners for extra cash following his daughter Rosie's birth, Kevin warned him that Jenny was the one he needed to keep an eye on. The next day, Jenny finished with Mark, admitting that there was someone else. Kevin later explained to Mark that Robert Weston, a married man, was actually Jenny's boyfriend. An embittered Mark felt that he'd been taken for a mug by both Jenny and Kevin. When Kevin crashed Terry Seymour's car while repairing it as a foreigner, Mark wouldn't put it on the garage's insurance, refusing to do him a favour due to Kevin letting him down over Jenny. After Kevin spurned a friendly gesture from him, Mark sacked him from the garage. Kevin was taken on at Walkers' tyre and exhaust garage almost immediately, and with he and Mark having fallen out, Mark no longer visited Coronation Street.

By November, the garage had gone bust. Mark offered to sell Kevin cheap equipment but Kevin waited until the items were auctioned and got them at rock bottom prices for MVB Motors, which he managed on behalf of Mike Baldwin. Mark went to Sally to get her to lean on Kevin to give him a job, but the Websters felt they owed him nothing and spurned him.

Personality

Mark with Kevin Webster

When he arrived at Casey's Garage in 1989, Mark was an immature, hot-headed young man who took any excuse to get out of work. He grew up a little when Kevin Webster took him under his wing, learning that he couldn't always get his own way, but he became the owner of the garage before he was ready and, when his tendency to overreact and hold grudges cost him his friendship with Kevin, he was left to run the garage without his former boss's experience to lean on, and within a year he went out of business.

Mark considered himself an authority on women but the women he scored were usually dumb blonde types. His girlfriends included Sharon Priestley, Stephanie Smith, Flick Khan and Jenny Bradley. Rovers barmaid Tina Fowler asked him out but he rejected her as being too old for him. He liked cars - with a passing obsession with banger-racing in the summer of 1989 - and was a decent football player, participating in a match between the Rovers and Maurice Jones's building site workers, in which the Rovers emerged triumphant.

Background information

Stuart Wolfenden appeared in three episodes between January and September 1986 in the role of newspaper boy Craig Russell before being cast as regular character Mark Casey from 1989 to 1991. He returned to Coronation Street over twenty-three years later as Greig Hodge, in sporadic appearances between March and June 2015, becoming one of the few actors to return to the programme to play a new character having once been part of the main cast.

First and last lines

"Alright?" (First line, to Kevin Webster)

---

"'Ere you are, mate, I'll give you a game." (Final line, to Martin Platt)

Appendices

Employment history

Role	Institution	Duration
Mechanic	Casey's Garage	3rd April 1989 to October 1990
Manager	Casey's Garage	October 1990 to November 1991

See also

• Full list of appearances

External links

• Mark Casey at Corrie.net