.
Guest Character Profiles > Alan Haywood Paul Roberts

Alan Haywood 2014

After deciding that it was time for her to get back into the dating game, Waterhole manager Sheila Canning joined the online dating site, Ziva, and after a few initial hesitations, she arranged to meet Alan Haywood at the Community Centre's wine and cheese evening. Things got off to an awkward start as they bumped heads when they tried to kiss, and a nervous Sheila got her cheeses and wines confused with each other, and spilt wine all down Alan's jacket. However, she was surprised to find that Alan was actually quite taken with her, and was delighted as they arranged to see each other again.

When Sheila invited Alan to dinner, and cooked a mushroom risotto, her daughter Naomi made sure to hang around and meet her, wanting to be certain that he was good enough for her mum. Though Alan and Sheila seemed to be getting on well, Naomi was alarmed when, as they prepared to go for a walk after dinner, Alan told Naomi that it had been nice to meet her and then shocked her as he kissed her on the lips. Convinced that it had been deliberate, Naomi struggled to decide whether to damage her already fragile relationship with her mum by telling her, but after a few days, as Sheila and Alan prepared to go on their next date to a Chinese cooking class, she told her everything. Sheila spoke to Alan about it, and he insisted that it had been an accident and meant nothing - Sheila believed him, but as she and Alan went off on their date, Naomi couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. After some searching on the internet, she was surprised to find that Alan had a profile on a gay dating site and when he and Sheila returned, Naomi confronted him and warned him to be honest with Sheila. He was then forced to explain to Sheila that, although he'd removed his profile from websites looking for women, he was still active on sites looking for men. Sheila admitted that, although she might have been able to accept his bisexuality, she wasn't prepared to take things any further with someone who'd been prepared to deceive her, and she ended things between them.

Trivia Notes
• Alan lives in the Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena
• Alan uses the name 'Merlot49' on dating websites
• Paul Roberts was one of the short-listed actors when the role of Karl Kennedy was created in 1994