Happy Birthday Coronation Street

 Happy Birthday Coronation Street

Tomorrow marks the 63rd anniversary of one of the most long running and successful TV programmes Britain has ever produced. It would revolutionise the landscape of British TV and define its essence. Up until that point TV in Britain had been very staid, stuffy and conservative, a state of affairs which would no longer be the considered norm. It was a programme about people, their private lives, their triumphs and disasters, their gossip, their social class, the sense of upward mobility always the ambition in some cases but not in others.

Coronation Street, only scheduled for a short run by way of an experiment, burst into life on a wintry evening in early December 1960 and TV screens would be spellbound, astonished, hooked in the following years and just emotionally attached to commercial TV's very first foray into the world of soap opera. Nobody knew it at the time but Coronation Street would just go on and on almost indefinitely for the next 63 years because the story lines became so gripping that TV audiences could hardly keep themselves away from its stunningly crafted scenes. It had the kind of well rounded characters that would have kept Shakespeare in gainful employment for a long time.

The show's working title was originally Florizel Street but when the first cast of actors and actresses sat down in Granada's canteen for lunch, one of the canteen staff suggested that Florizel Street didn't quite sound as appealing as Coronation Street so the name stuck and here we are six decades later and still Corrie holds us in thrall, a masterpiece of scriptwriting, a classic at any time and so relevant up to the present day. It makes us cry, laugh, giggle and chuckle in equal measure and taps into our way of life or perhaps the one we used to know but still recognise.

Of course Coronation Street ticks all the right cultural boxes because it knows how we're feeling, thinking, reacting and relating to. It is still drawing in phenomenal viewing figures since it moves with the times. So Coronation Street, named after, quite logically, one of the back streets in Manchester where the programme was made, was born . Soon we'd become acquainted with a superlative group of jobbing thespians who were totally unknown at the time but would become familiar household names. 

Back in Granada studios, its now permanent venue, British TV was about to give birth to a highly acclaimed batch of programmes that would very much include Coronation Street in its debrief to entertain and amuse or just be serious and businesslike. World in Action would emerge as the one of the best and most influential of all news and current affairs programmes. It would be the epitome of investigative journalism at its most probing, topical and polemical, a programme that would delve deeply into the murky world of corrupt companies, the industrial unrest in some parts of Britain and politicians who just kept misbehaving.

But on one evening a couple of weeks before Christmas 1960, families across Britain switched on their TV sets more in fascination than anything else. It had been 10 years since the BBC first ventured into the rarefied world of soap opera with their interpretation of what would also become an art form. The Grove Family was a perfect insight into the austere world of post war Britain. It hardly shook the world to its foundations but was ground breaking and pioneering because nobody believed it could possibly work. The Grove Family, in hindsight, now seems too strait laced, horribly dated perhaps and, quite possibly as wooden as a piece of balsa. Nothing untoward or unsavoury apparently happened, there was nothing sensational about it and, for a while, only a minority seemed to understand it. It was still though 1950s Britain and that must have been terribly grim.

And so on December 9th 1960 the credits rolled and the magic just happened. Cut to a row of rooftops and chimneys pouring smoke, cut to a country that was still in black and white and finally the cat that suddenly took up residence on one of the roofs, curled up contentedly and then Coronation Street. There was a pub in Coronation Street called the Rovers Return, a small but subsequently lively rendezvous for drinking gallons of beer, chatting in the language of small talk and exchanging tittle tattle. It would be shine a light on all of the stereotypes that became an integral part of the programme.

There was the well educated student who was politically active and still living at home with his parents,  the two builders with their own builders yard, the corner shop with the chirpy and friendly assistant, another corner shop that sold everything and anything and then there was Ena Sharples. And that was the starting point for Coronation Street. Dipping its tentative toes into the world of soap, Ena Sharples was the first gossip monger, the woman with the distinctive hair net, a military trenchcoat that probably last saw service in 1942 and characters who were just dripping with personality.

Outside the new Coronation Street a group of young children would play pat a cake or maybe it was hopscotch. An endearing nursery rhyme would be sung quite flawlessly and now the producers, scriptwriters, and directors, always admirably conscientious, could relax or just hope that people would just watch over and over again, telling their work mates or school friends with a detailed running commentary. The programme that may have been intended as a powerful social documentary on the lives of a close knit community in Northern England flourished within six months and those who'd become addicted to its deeply dramatic narratives just gasped with amazement.

For the next 63 years the Rovers Return would become the central hub for all of those characters who suddenly discovered the art of comedy, an innate grasp of all the pressing social issues of the day and were quite happy to share their everyday problems. Within every family in Corrie there was an intimacy about every scene in the programme. Everything was just very cosy, snug and yet unpredictable. There were the blazing arguments between Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples, the brash directness of Elsie with her troubled family and men in her life. It was a formula that worked like a dream from day one.

In the Rovers Return meanwhile, landlord and landlady Annie and Jack Walker would become firmly established in the public's affections as the ideal matriarch and patriarch. Annie was the model of pomposity and bombast, a snooty and condescending figure who would never tolerate bad language or hoodlums in her pub disrupting the peace. Annie, initially, was both understanding and almost compliant at times, ready to accept the status quo but still dismissive of what she felt to be riff raff.

For years both Jack and Annie were somehow sympathetic but sharply critical of those who they felt didn't properly belong in their class or status. Jack always had a towel wrapped over his arms while Annie just seemed tut tut and sigh with evident displeasure at anybody she regarded as inferior or working class. The Rovers Return must have sold more pints of beer as any high street or village boozer because everybody retired to the Rovers when the piano was playing and there was a party.

But then there was Hilda and Stan Ogden, a couple so devotedly in love that even when they argued- which they frequently did - on a regular basis it was just inoffensive and temporary. Stan was the man in the donkey jacket, a hard bitten, local window cleaner who also did odd jobs for the locals. Stan was target practice for Hilda's biting tongue, a downtrodden and vulnerable character who was always getting in Hilda's way. Stan could never get it right even when he was sure he was. But Hilda and Stan were together beautifully for life, married until Stan died and Hilda also died. The pair had a wonderful chemistry and the relationship, although fraught with complications, survived and so did they.

Meanwhile there was Len Fairclough and Ray Langton, the working class labourers who were always up to the ears with jobs, contracts, invoices and permanently dissatisfied customers. Fairclough was almost a full time resident in the Rovers Return, loud and argumentative, forceful and outspoken, often ruthless and unnecessarily aggressive. Len, quite literally, had an indomitable fighting spirit and nobody messed with him unless of course you were ready and waiting for a punch up.

In the Rovers Return Snug three women would dominate one corner of the pub. Minnie Caldwell, with cat Bobby, would sit very demurely next to Ena Sharples while both would natter confidentially to each other as if everybody was there to be discussed and analysed with forensic detail. Ena would speak in the most insulting terms about people she could barely meet in the street without some sharp stiletto of criticism in their back. And then there was Martha Longhurst who famously died in the Snug slumping over onto the table after a day trip out. Poor Martha.

And then there was Ken Barlow, the inimitable Ken, the clever one, the intellectual who went to university and became a teacher. Ken was the one who wore that thick pullover at his parents dinner table and started to sound like Che Guevara or some radical thinking firebrand who just wanted to change the world overnight. Ken was married to Valerie who, after several years of marital bliss, tragically electrocuted herself with an iron while Ken was knocking back huge quantities of bitter in the Rovers Return.

Finally of course there was a whole gallery of the great and good. Bet Lynch was a brassy barmaid initially employed by Annie Walker and then graduating to landlady after Anne and Jack had passed. Bet was the woman every man in the Rovers must have fantasised about in their dreams, a blonde bombshell who charmed every man she set eyes upon. Who could ever forget Vera and Jack Duckworth? Jack and Vera became the Hilda and Jack of their generation, constantly bickering over the trivial and banal but then exchanging affectionate endearments when love was in the air which was invariably the case. Jack had his pigeons to care for while Vera just hollered and yelled at the top of her voice when something was wrong.

There is something indefinably timeless and magical about Coronation Street that may never die. Of course there have been the fatal train crashes, one of which almost completely demolished the Rovers Return, the frequent punch ups between Len Fairclough and Ken Barlow with Mike Baldwin, the always ambitious but annoying factory manager who hated Ken with a violent passion.  There was Mavis and Rita in the sweet shop- cum corner shop, joking, observing, laughing and always on first name terms with the local clientele. There was Alf Roberts, the hearty, dependable, jolly, cheerful and busy shopkeeper who also occupied the highest seat on the council before becoming mayor of  Weatherfield.

So if you happen to find yourself spiritually drawn to the cobble stoned roads of Coronation Street and the back to back houses that line this famous thoroughfare be sure to remember the history, the old characters who gave Corrie its essential backbone. And just a thought. Thank goodness for Coronation Street rather than Florizel Street which, according to some, sounded ironically like a soap powder. Here's to 63 more years of domestic drama and fun.