Joe McGann, Tony Danza's British counterpart on "The Upper Hand"

[TMC]

Yes, there actually was a UK remake of Who's the Boss? called The Upper Hand that ran from 1990-96. Honor Blackman (AKA Pussy Galore in the James Bond movie, Goldfinger) played the Mona Robinson counterpart in The Upper Hand.

Huge nineties TV star quits acting to retrain as psychotherapist working in a rehab facility

Story by Lucy Murgatroyd

A huge nineties TV star has QUIT acting to retrain as a psychotherapist working in a rehab facility.

Joe McGann, 67, is best known for playing Charlie Burrows in The Upper Hand between 1990 and 1996.

But over the years he has also landed a number of other roles in various other programmes.

He's played multiple different characters on BBC's Casualty between 1989 and 2024, Daz/Jake McIntyre in Doctors between 2005 and 2015, and Edward Hutchinson in Channel 4's Hollyoaks between 2019 and 2020.

More recently he's starred in ITV's Vera and Netflix's Kaos.

However, some fans will be shocked to know that he's decided to take on a different type of job.





His Substack channel states: 'Joe McGann is an actor, writer, and trainee psychotherapist.

'He works as a caseworker and tutor at a frontline addiction rehab in Liverpool.'

The actor recently opened up about what it means to be sober in a post on his account - and then spoke about how it relates to his profession.

Joe admitted: 'I work as a caseworker at a frontline addiction rehab in Liverpool.

'You don’t do that job for long without noticing the gap between what people say they believe about addiction and how they behave when it’s standing in front of them.'

Back in January 2022 it was revealed that Joe had split from his wife Tamzin after 16 years of marriage.

At the time it was reported that the soap star had found love again with campaigner Frances Malloy after they fell for each other during the first lockdown.

Joe had been married to therapist and wellness guru Tamzin since 2006.

According to The Sun, Joe and Frances met in early 2020, and he now regularly shares snaps of her on Instagram, with one caption seeing him brand her 'My girl.'

It had been widely thought that Joe and Tamzin were still married.

The actor, whose brothers are former Doctor Who frontman Paul McGann and Call The Midwife's Stephen McGann, still has an image of Tamzin on his Instagram feed, uploaded in 2015.

Daily Mail contacted representatives at the time for comment.

In a recent interview, Joe had hinted that he was in a new relationship when he revealed Frances moved in with him during the first Covid lockdown.

He told Liverpool's Silver Magazine: 'Well there's Mum and me, and Minnie the dachshund, and there's also the amazing Frances…

'You see, before the plague descended, I had met and fallen for Frances, and we were in the very early days of a new – and in both our cases – entirely unexpected love affair.

'Frances has one of her sons living at her house, and after discussion we decided that, if we were to see each other at all, and with other considerations, it would be best if she – and her son – isolated with me.

'What could possibly go wrong?

'In truth, what some friends were calling a baptism of fire has been – pretty much – one long and enjoyable episode of Bake Off/Masterchef, with honours going mostly to Frances.'

Frances herself made headlines in 2020 after winning an eight-year battle with the government to ban old tires on the road, after her son Michael, 18, was tragically killed in a 2012 crash while travelling home from a music festival.