By Luke Garratt
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A pub landlord died after disappearing and plunging into a river estuary following a drunken argument with Coronation Street actor Bruce Jones.
Justin Mathis, 29, stormed out of the George and Dragon pub in Conwy, north Wales, after the row with the actor, who played Les Battersby in the ITV soap, an inquest heard.
Mr Mathis allegedly drunkenly called Jones a ‘knobhead’, ‘prick’ and a ‘pillock’ before storming out of the pub on February 3, 2011.
(Left) Justin Mathis. A former Corby man who ran a pub in North Wales went missing shortly after having words with Coronation Street actor Bruce Jones (right), an inquest was told
He was reported missing the next day after he didn’t return to the bar he ran, the Bridge Inn, in the coastal town.
A coroner’s hearing was told Mathis had gone out with his partner to celebrate the end of a busy festive period at the pub he ran.
But after becoming ‘drunk and argumentative’ he went to a rival pub, the George and Dragon, to confront the landlord about holding quiz nights on the same night as his.
As he argued with licensee Graham Roberts, Mr Jones, who played Corrie’s resident alcoholic, walked past them in a corridor.
In a statement read at the hearing, Mr Jones said Mr Mathis shouted abuse but he did not respond.
The former soap star said he intervened when Mr Mathis took a swing at an elderly customer, and the publican then left the bar.
Local resident Anthony Carr told police he saw a man sitting or crouching close to the sea wall and CCTV footage showed him entering the quay area shortly before midnight but not leaving.
An extensive search by the coastguard, RNLI underwater teams was carried out, but his body was never found.
The George and Dragon pub in Conwy, north Wales, where the altercation took place before Mathis’ death
Bruce Jones (pictured left) was famous for playing Coronation Street’s Les Battersby, Corrie’s local alcoholic, seen here receiving a punch from his soon-to-be wife
A few days after the search, one of his boots was found on the opposite side of the Conwy estuary at Deganwy.
Mr Mathis was shortly pronounced dead, with coroner John Gittins recording his cause of death as ‘unascertained’.
He speculated that Mathis probably ‘fell into the water’ and in an address to Mathis’ family he said: ‘I can give you legal closure but not emotional closure.
‘I am entirely satisfied Justin had not deliberately taken his own life and it seems likely that he had fallen into the water.’
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