The actor Bernard Kay, who played the man who killed Ida Barlow in Coronation Street and Prince Saladin in the original Doctor Who, was shortlisted for a literary award yesterday for his first piece of writing since his youth when he was a Manchester Guardian "stringer" in the mid-1940s.

Kay, 78, wins £1,000 and stands to get £5,000 if he wins the creative non-fiction section of the New Writing Ventures prizes, sponsored by the University of East Anglia and the Arts Council.

He filed stories to the Guardian while a cub reporter on the Bolton Evening News.