Will Mellor recalls Prince William breaking up a nightclub fight

Mellor recounts the encounter in Where There’s A Will: My Story, released in hardback on Thursday 5 November. He told Closer that Prince William, then 44, helped him up and urged him to leave the fight. Security escorted Mellor out; he said he called back to the prince, asking him to tell the others that one of them had knocked him off his crutches.

The actor said he had been taking painkillers that night. He also recalled chatting with William at a urinal, and joked that his wife, Michelle McSween, was annoyed he had not taken the opportunity to compare himself with the future king.

Mellor, who turned 50 in April, said writing the book was an emotional experience. “I cried a lot writing this – it was like therapy,” he told the magazine. His television credits include Hollyoaks, where he played James “Jambo” Bolton from 1995 to 1998 and briefly in 2004, as well as Coronation Street, Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Line Of Duty.

Mellor and McSween met in 1999 while starring in the stage musical Oh! What A Night. They have son Jayden, 22, and daughter Renee, 18. Mellor said they make time for date nights and try to support each other around the demands of his work.

The book also addresses the deaths of his father, Bill, who died in 2020 two weeks after a cancer diagnosis, and his sister Joanne, who died of heart failure in 2012. Mellor said he hopes readers facing difficulties will take encouragement from his story: “Don’t give up. You don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.”