Mick Chaney was a psychotic gangster involved in several criminal enterprises, including drugs, and using the skills of his boyfriend Todd Grimshaw to launder the illicit takings. Todd gave in to temptation and, along with a confederate named Safia, stole £1,000 of the money, earning himself a death sentence from the vengeful man. Todd was happy to go underground to escape his wrath but in the meantime Safia posed as her partner to obtain more money by deception from his mother Eileen. Her scam came to nothing, thanks to the intervention of Todd's former partner Billy Mayhew, but he knew next to little of what was going on and put Eileen's life at risk by beginning a publicity campaign for information as to Todd's whereabouts, thereby possibly leading Mick to Eileen's door.
Returning to the north from his hiding place in London to alert her, Todd was instantly spotted by Mick's men when he arrived at Piccadilly Station and alerted their boss. Todd had left Eileen a message to meet him at a warehouse on Gas Street where mother and son were reunited in the car park. Mick emerged, ready to deal with his recalcitrant employee. After a few moments pleading, Todd clubbed Mick to the ground with a handy lump of wood, and he and Eileen fled the scene.
Hearing that Eileen had been asked to identify an unknown man fished from the canal and see if it was him, Todd realised that a positive identification could be the end of his troubles. She refused to go along with the plan but it did reach the ears of undertaker George Shuttleworth who carried a candle for her and he amended the plan to stage a mock funeral for Todd, complete with an empty coffin. Mick turned up to see for himself what was going on and was not taken in by the ludicrous ruse. Eileen offered him the £1,000 to call his contract off and Mick turned up at 11 Coronation Street where Todd quickly hid upstairs. Mick took the cash but wanted to stick around to see Todd, revealing to Eileen that he and her son were once lovers. He soon realised by a creaking floorboard that Todd was upstairs and forced him downstairs by a threat to shoot Eileen with a gun he produced from his coat pocket. He led him outside to kill him in the yard but a passing Gary Windass had heard what was going on and Mick earned another bang to the head, this time with a baseball bat.
Mick wasn't put off and returned to the street where, unable to find Todd, he went with a paid thug in tow to Gary's furniture shop where he was given a good beating for interfering. Eileen tried to contact Mick to arrange a truce but instead heard his hitherto-unknown husband, Erik, behind whose back Mick and Todd had been having an affair. She killed the call, but Erik rang the number back and realised it was the Street Cars phone. Suspicious and jealous as to what his husband was up to, Erik came round to the cab firm where he aggressively confronted an utterly oblivious Tim Metcalfe. Eileen had to intervene and diffused the situation by lying to Erik that it was she who called as Mick had left a present for him in the back of a cab. She later brought Mick into No.11 where she told him he was ruining his life by playing around with her idiot son behind his loving husband's back, especially when they were cementing their relationship by having a daughter by a surrogate mother, and as they hadn't dropped him in with the police over his assault on Gary, he owed them. Mick reluctantly agreed and he left with a warning to Todd never to cross his path again.
A few months later, it was crooked businessman Ray Crosby who earned Mick's wrath. His business dealings to knock down one half of the street and the surrounding area to be replaced with a development of luxury flats had run into financial difficulties and a desperate Ray had borrowed £100,000 from the gangster. Not paying it back on time earned Ray a beating with a threat that next time he would be thrown off the high-level Barton Bridge on the M60 motorway. Having heard nothing after a few weeks, he called at the Viaduct Bistro and was told that Ray had disappeared and that Debbie Webster was now in charge of his business dealings. Although Ray's partner, she had no idea until then about Mick's involvement and only discovered it when she called at her flat where Ray was hiding from the police on rape and fraud charges and he informed her.
List of appearances[]
2020
2021