Barbara Knox interview - "I'm Rita till I die!"

There's a wonderful - and rare - interview in today's Mirror with the legend that is Barbara Knox, who of course plays Coronation Street's Rita Sullivan.  As regular readers may know, Rita's been my favourite Corrie character for decades. You can check out my Rita's Men post I wrote for the official ITV Corrie website here.

Sue Crawford's interview with Barbara takes place in the run up to Rita's wedding to Dennis next Monday, 4 June and I'm pleased to report that Barbara says she has no plans to retire as Rita.

“Retire? What a filthy word,” she says. “I haven’t thought of retiring. I keep saying to everybody I know – don’t retire, just keep working. It’s so good for you – it certainly is for me. I know it’s hard and you’re tired and you don’t want to go in, but your brain is in action. And I do think the sheer discipline of work helps to keep you younger. So apart from loving the job, that is at the back of my mind. I’ve done it all my life and I enjoy it and I genuinely find it stimulating.”

Barbara talks about the kidnap story for Rita on her wedding day and admits she was frightened by the canal scenes. “I was terrified – it really was very scary. There was quite a bit of rough handling and it was right at the edge of this water – it was awful. I was thrown about like a rag doll, almost going over into the water – it was very frightening. I was stood there watching them doing their dialogue so when he pushed me I screamed and it was genuine. I didn’t know that was going to happen – I thought he was just going to shake me. Greg Wood who plays Rick was very good. He hung on to me, because I was so terrified.”

There's information in the interview that I didn't know.  For instance, Barbara is divorced, has been married twice and has three children, John, 55, Amanda, 50, and Maxine, 42. She admits she enjoys gardening and tapestry and lives a quiet life.


Read the full interview here, it's great

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