Based on an idea by Tony Warren

On Monday night I took part in a First Draft cabaret evening at the Castle Hotel in Manchester. Back in early March, coincidentally on the day Tony Warren's death was announced, I saw a Facebook post from Archives+. The North West Sound Archive has found a new home with them, moved from its attic eyrie at Clitheroe Castle. It's an amazing resource and the Archives+ team, and my one time mentor, David Govier are exploring ways of making these sound archives come to life as a source of inspiration. A selection were put on Sound Cloud and we were invited to respond, taking an interview or recording as a starting point.It was an inspired and inspiring evening. I was beyond nervous at the beginning but so pleased to have done it. I was taken by the interview with Violet Carson, better known as Ena Sharples. What follows is basically what I wrote and read on Monday night. What I neglected to mention is that my amazing Granpa, Dr Garlick, looked exactly like old Steptoe! The Street: Based on an idea by Tony Warren Listening to Violet Carson’s story of how she took on and developed her role as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street took me back to my childhood. Both my parents came from an area of Salford known as Pendleton. My father’s family were in textiles. My grandfather was on the Cotton Exchange. My mother’s grandfather was head teacher at Langworthy Road school. My mother’s father was a GP based in the heart of the Salford Slums, Hankinson Park, better known as Hanky Park. He was born in 1880 and was practising as a doctor in the early years of the twentieth century. I remember going to his surgery also on Langworthy Road. Percy Garlick was an old grandfather. He had 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys. I have been told that he sat on the Poor Law Board, and that he introduced mid morning milk to schools in Salford. He delivered Alistair Cooke, who never liked to admit he was a Salford lad, choosing Blackpool as a more refined place of birth. He was ahead of his years, fast tracked through his medical training. He’d worked as a ship’s surgeon. He looked after his patients before the National Health Service, some giving him what they could, and not always cash, to pay for their care. As a child I got used to being stopped in the street by people who saw the family resemblance between me and my sisters and my aunts, who wanted to talk about Dr Garlick. Years later, giving a local history talk in Eccles, a lady told me how as a child she had delivered the weekly sixpence to the house on Broad Street, an early form of health insurance. I tell you this because I need you to realise that my family were in the heart of Salford and Salford was in our hearts. But as the city became synonymous with slums and poverty, I know my mother found it increasingly difficult to admit to her origins. It’s a terrible thing to be a convent educated doctor’s daughter from Salford, especially if you are a bit of a snob. Listening to Violet Carson’s cutglass accent, I’m reminded that we had elocution lessons at school. Woe betide if your roots were identifiable by a Salford accent. To our amazement, even as children, when we were precociously aware of the shame of Salford, my mother became a huge fan of Coronation Street. She watched it from the beginning. We were allowed to stay up on Mondays and Wednesdays to watch it with her. It became our treat too. As the story lines and the characters developed my sister and I were caught up in Lucille Hewitt’s crush on Dennis Tanner and the scandal of her compass and ink tattoo of his name. Lucille’s mother was called Conceptua and one of my friend’s mothers had the same unmistakably catholic name. My father worked for a firm of civil engineers called Leonard Fairclough. My best friend’s father was an extra, appearing regularly in the public bar of the Rovers Return. We wrote plays and did drawings on scrap scripts he brought home. Another neighbour was a cameraman on the programme and his children were the envy of the road because they had been taken to the cinema by the actress who played Irma Ogden, Stan and Hilda’s daughter. My piano teacher was a friend of Violet Carson. I hated the lessons, but loved getting Miss Hayes to tell stories of her childhood and her friends. On retirement my grandparents moved to the rural splendour of Little Hayfield. Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner, lived there, and I believe Tony Warren wrote episodes in the Lantern Pike pub. Violet Carson played the organ at the Ambassador Cinema on Langworthy Road, whilst Ena Sharples played it in the Gospel Hall. Did you know there was a bible of characters and storylines for scriptwriters who joined the team? So fact and fiction wove in and out of the programme, in the names, the locations, the plots and the people. As I grew older I realised what a ground breaking series it was, in its depiction of essentially working class life at the start of the swinging sixties. It was affectionate and funny, but didn’t avoid difficult storylines. Violet Carson’s role as Ena Sharples combined with Martha Longhurst and Minnie Caudwell harked back to Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Three witches, three fates, providing a traditional and moral interpretation of the changes in society that everyone could recognise. They may have drunk milk stout but there wasn’t much milk of human kindness in the Rovers’ snug. Old values met new fangled ways in Weatherfield. No wonder it was such a success and has become the longest running TV soap opera. It validated a world that my parents, especially my mother, was very familiar with, even though she may not have felt a part of it. It changed the image of Salford. Salford is now Media City and the Lads Club, the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum. The Coronation Street visitor experience is geographically placed there. At the start of the series it could have been set in any run down area of Manchester or Salford, before sixties redevelopment took hold. It’s a remarkable survival in fiction. John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford, made it on to the English exam syllabus. A far cry from my school elocution lessons. My mother continues to watch Coronation Street. Before clever televisions, you wouldn’t dare to phone her in that sacrosanct half hour. The fictional Street has helped her deal with family crises over the years. I started to write this piece on the day that Tony Warren’s death was announced, March 2nd. About thirty years ago a neighbour’s daughter invited me to a party. She had been a script writer on the programme and I was thrilled to meet Tony Warren there. And more recently an old schoolfriend had a small part as a social worker on the programme. The Street continues to connect.