Corrie writer profile: Lucy Gannon

Souces: The Independent, IMDB, Ian Wylie's blog

Lucy Gannon joined the Coronation Street writing team in 2007.

"I write about things I know for audiences I know," she said in an interview. "I'm not sitting in an ivory tower. I've never had awards because I don't write for critics or accolades. I write for people sitting at home. I've been the target of snooty critics because I don't pretend to know more than I know. The people who watch and commission me value me.”


Lucy Gannon once worked as a nurse and lived in a concrete council house with no central heating. Now she resides in a converted barn in Derbyshire and is one of the most sought-after TV writers around. After creating such long-running series as Soldier, Soldier and Bramwell, She wrote the first series of Peak Practice and is pictured here (on the left) in this photo. Lucy Gannon is one of only a handful of screenwriters whose very name on a project is enough to ensure it is commissioned.

It all started in 1987 when, having only ever seen one play in her entire life, Lucy decided to enter the Richard Burton Award for New Playwrights. She was hoping to win some money towards a new car. In the event, her offering, Keeping Tom Nice, about a disabled boy whose father commits suicide, beat 1,500 other entries and earned her the award and a six-month attachment to be writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.


In 1988 Keeping Tom Nice was staged to acclaim at the Almeida Theatre in London, and in 1989 shown as a BBC TV Screenplay starring Linus Roache (who is the son of William Roache who plays Corrie’s Ken Barlow). The fact that Gannon had another life before coming into television - she has been a military policewoman and a residential social worker as well as a nurse - only enhanced her writing. Gannon has a bulging portfolio of successful single dramas, including Dad, Tender Loving Care, Trip Trap, The Gift and Big Cat. She currently has an ITV mini-series about Edwardian repression and a BBC serial about infidelity on the go. What a woman.

Find out more about your favourite Corrie writers by clicking on the links below.
Jonathan Harvey, Carmel Morgan, Debbie Oates, Mark Wadlow, Damon Rochefort.


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