Tyrone Dobbs was hit by a car in shocking scenes on Coronation Street last night. To avoid Betsy in the precinct, a car swerved and ended up hitting Tyrone – before the driver drove away in a hit and run.

It has started a new storyline for Tyrone as he suffers a severe spinal injury and will face a long road to recovery, with the support of his wife Fiz. Next week on the soap, Tyrone will tell his wife he can’t feel his legs.

Speaking about Tyrone’s feelings, he said: “As you can probably imagine, Tyrone’s first thoughts are confusion. He can’t really remember what’s happened, he doesn’t know why he’s in the hospital.

“And then as he’s coming round and he’s clearly in lots of pain, he has this realisation that something isn’t quite right and he can’t feel his legs. There’s just a hell of a lot of fear, wondering how he’s got there, why he’s feeling like this. He is terrified.”

He added: “He waits until he is on his own with Fiz in the hospital as she doesn’t want to scare the others, particularly his girls. Once he starts to understand what’s going on with him and why he can’t feel his legs and what’s happened, he needs his family around him – because he really is a family man. But I think overall there’s just this fear and trepidation of what this is going to bring and how his life is going to look after this accident. He will want to be strong for the family but that is going to be difficult.”

This will be a long running storyline and will show how the family rally around Tyrone as he recovers slowly. Speaking about the wider effect of Tyrone’s accident, Alan said: “I think Tyrone obviously knows that a lot of the pressure will fall on Fiz – the kids, work, the house. He’s aware of that, and I don’t think he wants to add his stress onto her shoulders.

“Tyrone always has good intentions and maybe doesn’t go about them in the right way, and I think even in this situation – as opposed to just talking to Fiz and trying to help, he goes about things in the way that he thinks best, trying to shield them from what is happening when he should be honest about how he feels.”

Coronation Street is working with the Spinal Injuries Association on the storyline so he can learn the movements he needs to portray.

“The show’s brilliant at doing the research. The thing is with a spinal injury, though, is that they’re different for every single person. So speaking to the medical professionals who are on set, I’m wanting to know ‘how much can I turn my shoulders? How much can I turn my head?’ But everybody has a different reaction to their surgery, and therefore there is no real timeline,” he said.

“It means that we don’t have to be so specific, because that could also bring its challenges. But it’s being aware that there are people at home who this has happened to for real. The charity is also arranging for us to meet someone who has been living through a similar situation so it will be invaluable to get some insight from them.”