Philip Lowrie, who has died aged 88, played the teenage tearaway Dennis Tanner in the first episode of Coronation Street, broadcast on December 9 1960; he remained with the soap until 1968, returning again in 2011 when he earned a Guinness World Record for what was then the longest gap between TV appearances as the same character in the same show.

Dennis arrived on the Street having just been released from three months in prison for stealing from a newsagent. He moved in with his mother Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix), but was the bane of her life. “He was the sort of boy then who would kick somebody in the shins and run away,” Lowrie said in 1962.

The loveable rogue was briefly written out in 1962 due to industrial action behind the scenes, but Dennis returned the following year, evolving into “the sort of person who is willing to have a go at anything – literally anything – but never seems to do anything right,” Lowrie said.

To Elsie Tanner’s frustration Dennis rattled through countless jobs, including sales rep, warehouse labourer, taxi driver, hair stylist, auctioneer, builder’s labourer and bookie. His true love, however, was show business and he became a compère at the somewhat seedy Orinoco Club.

By 1968 Lowrie had tired of playing Dennis and left the soap for repertory theatre, complaining that his character was not being allowed to grow up.

“It has just been going round like a little mouse in a wheel,” he observed. “With his departure, Philip Lowrie was reborn.”

Despite vowing never to return, Lowrie did just that 43 years later when Dennis, now older and homeless, was spotted at a soup kitchen. He was reunited with his former sweetheart, Rita Sullivan (Barbara Knox) and they married, though soon drifted apart.

Lowrie left the show for good in 2014 but Dennis was not officially killed off until 2020, when during the 10,000th episode Rita received a parcel containing a funeral urn with Dennis’s ashes and a letter saying that he had died from dementia

Colin Philip Lowrie was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, on June 20 1936, the son of Philip Lowrie, a paper mill foreman, and his wife Bertha (née Collins), a weaver. His childhood stammer was cured at Miss Atheron’s elocution classes and he was educated at Stand grammar school, Bury. His mother saved £3 a week to pay for him to spend three years at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

After his two years of National Service he began appearing on stage, often in innocuous, boy-next-door roles – a contrast to the future Dennis Tanner.

In the West End he played Willie Bosworth in John Vari’s play Farewell, Farewell, Eugene with Margaret Rutherford and Peggy Mount, where he was spotted by Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street

In the early days Lowrie was not keen on television, saying he missed the immediacy of a live audience, but he soon warmed to it. After one episode, in which Dennis sang a song, he was invited to record the comical ditty I Might Have Known (1963), produced by John Barry, but it sank without trace.

His character attracted many female fans, including two girls from Hampstead, who wrote asking what made his hair so glossy. He replied that for filming he used hair cream. Thereafter they sent a weekly jar with messages and kisses pinned to the lid