When he was 15, Mike Reid worked as a coalman.
Before getting into entertainment, Mike Reid also worked as a merchant seaman and a bricklayer, as well as engaging in certain criminal activities that led to a spell in Brixton prison.
Mike Reid started out in TV as a cockney comic - most notably on The Comedians.
Reid became known to millions years later as the actor who played Frank Butcher in EastEnders.
In 2007, Mike Reid along with Suzanne Shaw and Malcolm McLaren had been scheduled to appear in ITV's reality show, The Baron.
When Mike Reid died in July 2007, the show was postponed until April 2008.
