As the volatile, thrice-married Yorkshire farmer, Jack Sugden, with his familiar flat cap and wax jacket, Clive Hornby was the longest-serving actor on the ITV soap, Emmerdale, which he joined in 1980.

He was then in his mid-thirties and Emmerdale transformed an acting career that until then had been largely undistinguished. “When I was offered the part they said they wanted me to go away and think about it”, he recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t need to go away, I’ll do it’. I had no money, no house, no car, nothing.”

Jack Sugden was originally played by Andrew Burt who left to pursue other work and for four years the character lapsed. When Yorkshire Television decided to revive him Hornby was brought in, but only on a three-month contract. He stayed for the next 28 years before illness forced him to step down in January.

Hornby was born in Liverpool in 1944. After briefly working as an accounts clerk he became a drummer with The Dennisons, a popular 1960s band which appeared at the Cavern on the same bill as The Beatles. After the group split up he decided to switch to acting, spending a year at Liverpool Playhouse as an assistant stage manager before training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

He spent years struggling to make ends meet in repertory theatre and had small parts in television shows, including Gerry Anderson’s Space 1999, the army comedy Get Some In and an episode of Minder. He was appearing in a West End production of Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage when he was offered the chance to join Emmerdale Farm, as the show was then called.

When Hornby joined the cast Emmerdale was still in its original mode as a farming soap, with the doings of Sugden family at its heart. Hornby was seen milking the cows, driving a combine harvester and ploughing fields. But to compete for viewers Emmerdale adopted more sensational storylines, including arson, murder and, most famously, an horrific plane crash.

Hornby’s Sugden was not immune. His first wife, Pat, was killed in a car accident and after his second wife died in a barn fire he was arrested for her murder. The fire episode brought Hornby and the actor Kelvin Fletcher, who played his adopted son Andy, a British Soap award for most spectacular scene.

He later married Diane, the pub landlady played by Elizabeth Estensen, who was nearly killed in a house collapse. In 2004 Jack nearly died after being shot by Andy and in an episode to mark the show’s 35th anniversary in October last year he was again left fighting for his life when his daughter Victoria tried to burn down the house with him and Andy trapped in it.

Hornby was married to the actress Helen Weir, who played his first screen wife, Pat, and they had a son, Thomas. Weir left the cast after the birth and she and Hornby later divorced.

Clive Hornby, actor, was born on October 20, 1944. He died on July 4, 2008, aged 63