Rob Mallard thought he'd lost his Corrie job

ob Mallard was "genuinely concerned" he was getting the boot from \'Coronation Street\' when it was revealed his character pushed Ken Barlow down the stairs.

The 25-year-old actor was terrified he was getting sacked from the long-running soap after it became apparent that his alter-ego Daniel Osbourne was the person who had almost killed his grandfather (William Roache) when the OAP mysteriously took a tumble down the stairs a few months back in a shocking whodunnit plot.

Speaking on \'This Morning\' on Monday (03.07.17) he said: "\'Coronation Street is a very moral show so any character that does anything amoral, eventually the show will catch up with them and get rid of them or punish them for it so I thought well there\'s no reason this character would be immune to that so I asked Kate Oates, who is the producer, and said: \'Does this mean I need to get my CV refreshed and start handing it out again?\' I was genuinely concerned that would be it."

And the strawberry-blonde hunk would have been devastated if he had lost his job, despite the major storyline he was given, because he auditioned three times.

He explained: "First I had this group audition with loads of Northern lads and then I was called back for another audition. It was nerve-wrecking, especially with Chris Gascoyne, who plays Peter Barlow, and then I thought that would be it - if I\'ve got it, I\'ve got it, if I\'ve not, I\'ve not. It\'s all done - but then they rung up again and said: \'Do you mind coming in again? We\'ve narrowed it down to an even smaller pool and we want you to do a screen test with Katie McGlynn who plays Sinead.\' So I thought well it\'s all to play for again so I went back in, got that done and then the rest is history."

And when he found out that Daniel had pushed Ken, he and the team decided to keep the culprit a secret from his co-stars in order to build even more suspense.

He said: "About six weeks/ two months before. It wasn\'t that I couldn\'t tell them, it was that we thought maybe we shouldn\'t tell them because what we were hoping it would do, it would start to foster suspicion among us which would then roll over."