Jack Michaelson
Jack Michaelson is a character in Channel 4 soap Brookside played by Paul Duckworth for the final three episodes in October and November 2003. Due to the upcoming cancellation of the show, the inside of Michaelson's house was never shown in order to save on designing an internal set.
| Jack Michaelson | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Jack Michaelson | |||||
| Brookside character | |||||
| Portrayed by | Paul Duckworth | ||||
| Duration | 2003 | ||||
| First appearance | 21 October 2003 | ||||
| Last appearance | 4 November 2003 | ||||
| Created by | Phil Redmond | ||||
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Description
Jack moved into 8 Brookside Close, several months after the Farnhams had previously sold up and moved to Woolton. Jack was quite rude to his neighbours and had run-ins with them on frequent occasions.
Upon seeing Jack move in, Sean Smith (Barry Sloane) decided to offer his services erecting a television aerial for Jack. Jack was deliberately rude to Sean. Later when Jack's delivery man turned up late, Jack intimidated him and gave him unreasonable orders. When Jack complained about the mess, the man apologised. In response to this, Jack gave him a vicious beating in front of all the neighbours.
He then had a run-in with Tim O'Leary (Philip Olivier) when Jack complained about Tim and Steve Murray's (Steven Cartait) limousine apparently blocking his drive. Jack gave Tim a stern warning to move the limo. When Steve decided to move the limo, Tim shouted at Steve and told him not to give into Jack.
He also supplied drugs to Ali Gordon (Kris Mocherrie) and his friend Tommo. When he heard that Ali got arrested for taking drugs, he called round to Ali's house where he threatened to murder Ali if he mentioned to the police about where he really got the drugs from. Ali continued to take drugs but this would result in a near tragedy when his nephew Luke (Callum Giblin), whom he was babysitting, picked up and took one of the drugs which Ali had dropped on the floor.
When Jack found out his daughter Suzi (Simone Barry) was taking drugs he barged his way into the Murrays' house and attacked Steve's brother Anthony (Ray Quinn). When Tony's stepmother Jan (Helen Sheals) tried to restrain Jack, he hit her across the face.
In retaliation for this, Steve, his father and Jan's husband Marty (Neil Caple) and Marty's brother Christy (Glyn Pritchard) jumped Jack and attacked him with two-by-four planks of wood. In retaliation, Jack attacked Christy with a baseball bat in the middle of the close, forcing him to have a kidney removed despite Ron Dixon (Vince Earl), his wife Bev (Sarah White) and her son Josh McLoughlin's (Jack McMullen) attempts at stopping Jack from attacking Christy.
Jack caused further trouble when Anthony wound up in hospital after smoking a crack joint and having a bad reaction to it. Suzi had given Anthony the joint; she also ended up in hospital.
After a conversation Tim had with Barry Grant (Paul Usher), the residents of Brookside Close lynched Jack from his own window. The culprits who did this were never made clear, however when the residents were moving out Jimmy Corkhill (Dean Sullivan), Tim, the Gordons and the Murrays all used the same type of rope that hanged Jack to attach their possessions to their cars. This is somewhat reminiscent of when Sue (Annie Miles) and Danny Sullivan were pushed from the scaffolding of Brookside Parade and all the suspects were wearing the same clothes to prevent viewers being able to detect the killer. The police wrote his lynching off as a drugs killing as everyone involved had an alibi and nobody on the street claimed to see his killers. Jack's hung body was found by a passing milkman the morning after the night he was lynched.
The name Jack Michaelson was a play on the name of Channel 4's previous chief executive Michael Jackson.