Coronation Street actor Rob Mallard has called the horrifying scenes that will air next week a “wake-up call” for his character Daniel Osbourne.

In the episodes coming your way over the next few days, Daniel wakes up from a night of drinking to discover that his son Bertie has gone missing. Even worse, he injures Ken Barlow during an argument with Adam.

And even worse than that, social services later knock at his door.

“[It’s] 100% a wake-up call,” Mallard said.”[Daniel is] completely beside himself, he thinks that he’s going to have his kid taken off him and again it’s all to do with keeping a promise that he made to Sinead.”

Explaining Daniel’s lashing out, the actor stated: “It’s always Ken that he seems to hurt. When Daniel’s trapped, he comes out fighting and that resentment he feels from his earlier life seems to find its way back towards Ken. He still feels he was abandoned by Ken when he was a kid.

“So even though they’re in a much better place now, there’s still that resentment simmering away in the background.

“When I play scenes with Bill, whenever Ken’s trying to give Daniel advice on a life problem, I always play it like a 14 year old, because that’s exactly where they would be in that relationship, that’s where he was left. So Daniel can’t help but turn into a petulant teenager around Ken.”

And while the actor agreed that Daniel is definitely “spiralling”, he doesn’t think this is the worst things could get.

“I think he could keep going further”, he said. “Once someone gets a bit of mud on them, you might as well get properly dirty.

“I think that in terms of Daniel’s character, if he’s going to go off the rails, he should go off them properly, possibly even lose custody of Bertie temporarily, really teach him a lesson.”