David Fleeshman (born 11 July 1952) is a British actor, broadcaster, drama lecturer and theatre director with experience in film, radio, television, theatre and commercials.
Fleeshman was born on 11 July 1952 in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Rosina and William Fleeshman.
His family was Jewish.
He trained at The Birmingham Theatre School making his stage debut was in 1973 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
In 1974 he took a position as actor/assistant stage manager at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, and has also been an associate director of the Oldham Coliseum Theatre.
In 1978 he married actress Sue Jenkins, who played Gloria Todd on Coronation Street, 1985–1988, and Jackie Corkhill in the Channel 4 soap Brookside, 1991–2001.
They have three children all currently working in the acting profession: Emily Fleeshman, Richard Fleeshman and Rosie Fleeshman.
Fleeshman has appeared in and directed numerous plays around the UK and abroad, including Arthur Miller's The Price, for which he won best actor in a supporting role at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards in 2005.
As a theatre director, he directed the European premiere of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, and the regional premiere of My Night With Reg, which won best production at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards.
Fleeshman's major television roles include Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darkness, Silent Witness, and Trial & Retribution, comedy classics such as Only Fools and Horses and A Bit of a Do, as well as stints in Coronation Street, Brookside, Doctors, Emmerdale, and EastEnders.
He has also recorded frequently for BBC Radio.
Filmography includes Pink Floyd – The Wall and Unstoppable.
From 2013 to 2015 he toured extensively with the Royal National Theatre's War Horse, which played to audiences at venues throughout the United Kingdom, Dublin and South Africa.
During 2016 Fleeshman portrayed the judge in Channel 4's National Treasure and played the leading role Charlie Resnick in Darkness, Darkness at the Nottingham Playhouse.
From 2016 to 2019, he directed the Christmas pantomimes Aladdin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Peter Pan (starring Cannon and Ball and Chico Slimani), performed at Crewe Lyceum Theatre.
In 2018 he was nominated by the Manchester Theatre Awards as best supporting actor for his role as Uncle Vanya.
Opera singer Jessica's flight to her concert in Vienna gets delayed and she is stuck in a remote area of England. The only place to stay is a bed-and-breakfast in an enchanting village run by a handsome widower named Andrew.
A woman learns about the death of her Orthodox Jewish father, a rabbi. She returns home and has romantic feelings rekindled for her best childhood friend, who is now married to her cousin.
Robson Green and Mark Benton co-star in Christmas Lights, a one-off comedy drama for ITV1 centred on two lifelong friends who have always competed with each other. The festive season brings on new challenges and takes their rivalry to extremes resulting in the two friends forgetting what Christmas is really about. Can anything bring them to their senses?
The deranged military and former CIA agent Dean Cage is in a rehab program, trying to forget the traumatic loss of his best friend Scott in Bosnia. When he dates with his girl-friend and Scott's sister, Detective Amy Knight, in a dinning restaurant, he is mistakenly taken as being the CIA agent that is investigating the robbery of the military experiment EX by a man called Sullivan. He is injected with the drug and abducted by the thieves. Amy has six hours to find the also stolen antidote and save Dean's life.
The Falklands Play is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War. The play was written by Ian Curteis, an experienced writer who had started his television career in drama, but had increasingly come to specialise in dramatic reconstructions of history. It was originally commissioned by the BBC in 1983, for production and broadcast in 1986, but was subsequently shelved by Controller of BBC One Michael Grade due to its alleged pro-Margaret Thatcher stance and jingoistic tone. This prompted a press furore over media bias and censorship.The play was not staged until 2002, when it was broadcast in separate adaptations on BBC Television and Radio.
With the help of a feisty aristocratic woman, a working-class Scotland Yard inspector hunts for a serial killer of young women in Victorian London.
Caves of Glass is a documentary from director Sid Perou's Realm of Darkness series, focusing on the ice caves of the Austrian Tennengebirge Alps, including the Eisriesenweld and Eiskogelhöhle. It features Austrian speleologist Fritz Oedl, Belgian speleologist Guy Meauxsoone, and Ian "Tommo" White of the Northern Caving Community. First broadcast on Channel 4 on February 15, 1986, it won a Special Mention at the 5th Barcelona International Festival of Esoteric Cinema that same year.