The rise and fall of convicted TV actor John Alford

Former London’s Burning and Grange Hill star John Alford has experienced a dramatic fall from fame. Once a familiar face on British television, Alford’s career has been overshadowed by criminal convictions.

His latest, for sexual assaults on two teenage girls in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, means the former child actor will spend up to eight and a half years in jail.

So who is John Alford, and what legal troubles has the 54-year-old from Holloway, north London, faced over the years?

Born with the name John Shannon, the actor moved to London early in his childhood and attended stage school in the city.

As a child actor, he popped up in Not the Nine O’Clock News in 1982 and then took a role in the short-lived 1983 ITV series Now and Then.

In 1985 he joined the popular BBC Children’s series Grange Hill, which was shot in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

His character, rebellious first-year Robbie Wright, was in the show until 1989.

He was part of the cast in 1986 when they released Just Say No, an anti-drugs song that reached number five in the UK chart.

Later he confessed that as a teenager he had been drinking up to 18 bottles of beer and nine shots of spirits a night.

“When I got ill I went to see somebody. They looked at my liver and told me to stop, which my mum had been telling me for years,” he said.

Alford’s best-known role came in 1993 when he joined the cast of ITV drama London’s Burning during its sixth series.

The show was about members of London Fire Brigade, and he played firefighter Billy Ray.

The show’s popularity helped raise Alford’s profile, who in 1996 launched a pop career.

The first single was Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, which reached number 13 in the UK chart.

A follow-up double single release of Blue Moon and Only You cracked the top 10, landing at number 9.

His final release, If/Keep on Running, reached number 24. The follow-up, Let It Be Me, was withdrawn before its release in early 1997.

In the same year in London’s Burning, Billy Ray was arrested on suspicion of murder. Although he was cleared by the end of the series, the character did not return the following year.

Alford was sacked from the show and jailed for nine months after he was convicted of supplying cocaine and cannabis to an undercover News of the World journalist in 1997.

He had been caught out by the so-called “Fake Sheikh”, Mazher Mahmood, who dressed as a sheikh to fool his high-profile targets as part of his tabloid “stings”.

Mahmood offered Alford £100,000 and the chance to join a celebrity line-up at the opening of a Dubai nightclub, and he also asked if the actor could supply him with drugs.

In 1999, Judge Stephen Robbins told Alford that although entrapment had played a significant part in the sting, he “willingly went along with the idea”.

The same journalist tricked singer Tulisa Contostavlos into believing he was a film producer before implicating her in a drug crime that was eventually thrown out. Mahmood was found guilty of conspiring and intending to pervert the course of justice.

Outside court after that case, Alford told journalists that members of the public “must not be held to ransom by a corrupt or unscrupulous press”.

In the years after his own conviction, he would take on much smaller roles in shows such as Casualty, the 2017 film The Hatton Garden Job, and Sky drama Mile High, in which he played a drug-dealing flight attendant.

In September 2018, police officers tried to arrest Alford, who officers noted was seemingly under the influence, while he was sitting in a Camden Council bin lorry.

During his arrest, he was heard shouting that he was “fighting corrupt police officers”, telling officers they were “in cahoots with News of the World” and “in cahoots with Mazher Mahmood”, and asking them “did [former News of the World proprietor] Rupert Murdoch send you here to kill me?”

In 2019 Alford admitted two counts of resisting an officer and was given a 12-month community order.

He was also ordered to complete a 25-day rehabilitation activity, pay £400 compensation and serve a 14-day curfew on an electronic tag between 20:00 and 06:00.

In September 2025, he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two teenage girls at a friend’s house in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, in April 2022.

A 14-year-old girl said Alford had raped her in the garden and the toilet after she had drunk vodka with him.

The 15-year-old girl said Alford sexually touched her as she was half asleep on a sofa.

Alford had denied the claims and told a police officer after his arrest: “This stinks. This is a set-up.”

However, the jury found him guilty by a majority verdict of 10 to two.