First Appearance |
Series 2, Episode 1 |
Last Appearance |
Series 3, Episode 6 |
Episode Count |
15 |
Actor |
Geoffrey Hutchings |
Born |
25th December 1939 |
Death |
25th December 2010 |
Family |
Nerys Harvey (?-1979) Madge Barron (wife) (2008–2010) Michael Garvey (step grandson) Chantelle Garvey (step granddaughter) Janice Garvey (step daughter) |
Occupation |
Businessman (formerly)
|
Cause/Reason |
Died on Christmas Day due to an unspecified illness |
Melvin Churchill "Mel" Harvey first appears in the second series as Madge's fiancé.
Mel is as rude as Madge, and is at first somewhat ridiculed by the Garvey family, although it is later proven that Mel will do anything for his family. Mel is an affluent businessman who started his business empire from a bakery in Kirkstall. By 2008, he had a chain of five sunbed shops in Manchester, which he tells everyone who will listen.
Mel was not entirely successful as a businessman though - having almost fallen for a property development scam by con-man and thief Gary Snelling during Series 3. Some of his other business dealings are also implied to have failed, as described by Mick "in debt up to his little yellow eyeballs" by the time he died.
In the third series he owns a shop in Benidorm renting mobility scooters, something Mick describes as a business 'renting scooters to fat bone idle alcoholics who are too lazy to walk to the pub'. By now, he is seen to get on with Madge's grandson Michael, but is still brisk and pompous with everyone else, seeing business opportunities everywhere - including on an island which had been declared a nature reserve. After Mick works for him in Benidorm, he begins to get on better with him.
Mel was absent in the 2010 Christmas special, the absence explained by the Garveys who say Mel "is away on business in Marrakech". Mick and Madge receive several unheard mobile phone calls from Mel, explaining that his flight has been delayed and he has to take the next flight the following day. Later, Mick receives a phone call in which he is told that Mel is in hospital having taken ill with an unspecified illness. Mick keeps this from Madge until he gets another call breaking the news that Mel has died in Marrakech. After his death, Madge lost all their money, and a con man going by the name of 'Mohammad Mohammad' claimed to have half of Mel's fortune from a business trip in Marrakech prior to his death.
In Series 7, the Garveys leave for Las Vegas after being told that Mel had inherited land there, and due to a hotel having been built on it, the value of their land was now estimated conservatively at $30 million.
Biography[]
Mel was born Melvin Churchill Harvey, an only child in Leeds on 25th December 1939 - Christmas Day. His father was in the British Armed Forces (presumably the British Army or Royal Marines), who died at Normandy during the Second World War.
Mel started his business empire at the age of twenty-three, when he opened his first bakery at Kirkstall in 1962. He was married to a woman called Nerys, but this relationship ended in 1979 when she died in a crazy paving accident. The couple had no children.
The height of Mel's empire peaked in 1992, when he had fourteen sandwich shops, which he sold for £1,800,000 when he retired at the age of sixty-six in 2005. He evidently grew bored with retirement quickly, and in 2006 opened a sunbed shop "for something to do" in his own words. Six months later, he had five shops, which he often spoke about; by the time of his wedding to second wife Madge in 2008, he was undergoing an offer by a multinational fitness club to buy him out.