Blanche Hunt may have won our recent blog poll for funniest character and Maggie Jones may have won an Inside Soap award for Funniest Performance, but Maggie told Inside Soap that she doesn't think Blanche is funny at all.Says Maggie: "Blanche genuinely believes that what she's saying is right, and doesn't say things for comedic effect. If I started trying to play the lines for laughs, they wouldn't come out right and the performance would suffer."
I think she's got a point. I think if Blanche were played for laughs, she'd be another run of the mill buffoon. Most of the funniest characters on Corrie are played seriously, like a straight man/woman. The characters don't even think they're funny. Having said that, some of the characters that are comic characters a lot of the time, like Steve McDonald, are clearly being played for laughs, I think. The actor always knows their character best and how best to put the performance out there so it's believable. With a few exceptions, naming no names, it's why most of the characters on Corrie are so well accepted. Their portrayers have the talent to make us love or hate their alter-egos as we are meant to. It's one of the things that makes Coronation Street so fab!
