50 Years Of Corrie In 50 Days – 2001

Day 41 of our 50 day countdown of Coronation Street - written by blogger Sunny Jim.

Although she later turned out to be gobby and sassy, Karen Philips made quite a subdued entrance to Coronation Street when her mate Linda Sykes helped her land a job as a knicker-stitcher at Underworld. That wasn’t to last though, she had a fling with Vikram Desai and a one-night stand with Peter Barlow before starting on Steve McDonald. Janice Battersby teased her about her disastrous track record with men and bet her that she couldn’t get Steve to propose to her. She confided in Steve about the tease and lo and behold he got down on one knee in the Rovers in front of all her mates from the factory. Janice saw through them and so upped the stakes a bit and bet her two days’ pay that she’d never actually get him to the altar.

Neither Steve nor Karen would back down and so it was that they arrived at the register office on May 30th 2001, each expecting the other one to chicken out but neither of them did and they ended up married. Six weeks later they went on honeymoon to Florida and realised that actually they really liked each other and would try to make a go of it. However, after a couple of years Karen decided that she wanted to do things properly and so they got divorced and arranged a fairy-tale wedding. It was such a fairy-tale in fact that it featured a deranged, jealous, evil witch in the shape of Tracy Barlow who wanted to get her clutches on Steve, the father of her daughter, Amy. Despite her attempts to sabotage the wedding plans and disrupt the service, the happy couple were eventually married though it wasn’t long before Tracy managed to split them up and the pair were divorced again.

Later that year Alma Halliwell received that shock news that due to a missed smear test and a further misdiagnosis, she had developed untreatable cervical cancer. Although a spokeswoman for Macmillan Cancer Relief applauded the storyline as it reminded women of the need to have regular smear tests and could therefore help save lives, the story was somewhat implausible and condemned by Amanda Barrie who played Alma: ‘Cervical cancer takes years to develop. No consultant would make a pronouncement as quickly and bluntly as that. I felt straightaway that it gave completely the wrong message.’

Initially Alma only told her best friend, Audrey Roberts but she eventually passed the information on to Alma’s ex-husband, Mike Baldwin who still cared for her deeply and regretted their splitting up. Alma headed off to the Lake District to get away from it all, get her mind straight and come to terms with the her imminent death. Mike tracked her down and full of and apologies confessed his regrets. They reminisced about the happy times they had spent together but Alma insisted that he should go back to his wife Linda and try to make a go of it. Alma spent her final hours at Audrey’s with Mike, Ken and other friends and her ashes were scattered in Derwentwater in her beloved Lake District.

Also in 2001: Ben Watts is born; Susan Barlow dies in a car crash; Toyah Battersby raped by Phil Simmonds; Sarah-Louise groomed by an internet predator; Matt and Charlie Ramsden move in; Eileen Grimshaw rents no. 11 with Todd and Jason; Fred Elliott marries Evelyn Sykes bigamously; occasional fifth episode sneaked in; Shelley Unwin makes her first appearance; Edna Miller dies in Duggie Ferguson’s bed.