Wednesday, 30 January 2013

The faces of 1980s Corrie

Inspired by Daran Little's 40 years of Coronation Street and having done some research on Corriepedia, I have come up with the top 12 faces of Coronation Street in every decade.


In the third of five posts, I look at the top 12 faces of Corrie in the 1980s. These are the faces who appeared the most during the decade.


  1. Bet Lynch/Gilroy (738 episodes, 1980-1989)
  2. Ivy Tilsley/Brennan (691 episodes, 1980-1989)
  3. Rita Fairclough (682 episodes, 1980-1989)
  4. Alf Roberts (681 episodes, 1980-1989)
  5. Mavis Riley/Wilton (667 episodes, 1980-1989)
  6. Betty Turpin (658 episodes, 1980-1989)
  7. Ken Barlow (657 episodes, 1980-1989)
  8. Deirdre Langton/Barlow (651 episodes, 1980-1989)
  9. Mike Baldwin (648 episodes, 1980-1989)
  10. Vera Duckworth (628 episodes, 1980-1989)
  11. Emily Bishop/Swain/Bishop (619 episodes, 1980-1989)
  12. Gail Tilsley (613 episodes, 1980-1989)
Average age: 48



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6 comments:

  1. Look at the ages of hese characters.
    Now we can see why Corrie's gone off the boil.
    Too many shouty young characters introduced with no talent for conversation and a limited range of life experience.

    I liked it when it was more mature all round.

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  2. People just looked and acted older then. Emily, Ivy, Rita and Vera were all around fifty in the eighties, which is the age Stella, Sally, Eileen and Gail are now. Mike and Ken were Peter's age and Bet and Mavis were similar. Deidre and Gail didn't turn thirty until late in the decade, putting them at similar ages to Maria, Leanne and Fiz.

    If anything, there are more older characters now as Annie, Ena and Albert left in the early eighties but we still have Rita, Dennis, Norris, Emily, Sylvia and Ken, who are all in their seventies or eighties.

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  3. I agree with Methuselah. There's a big difference between age and maturity.

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  4. This is really interesting. It's all the good characters. Emily and Ken spent 3 decades at least in the top 12. I guess by the time with get to the present, Rita will have achieved that too. No wonder they are unsackable.

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  5. What worries me is that the "younger" characters don't ever seem to learn from their mistakes. Come to think of it, neither do several of the seniors. Maturity is supposed to come from experience, which is then supposed to bring wisdom. Not a lot of that has been demonstrated under the Collinson regime. Let's hope the new producer allows characters to get smarter, which may mean bringing in more experienced, mature, wiser writers. The actors can only have intelligent conversations if the writers give them the words!

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  6. I really liked Alf in the '80s. He adored that Corner Shop, didn't he? And as the sole owner (after he inherited it from dear Renee in 1980) he did it proud, even modernising it in 1985. Audrey didn't like the Corner Shop, of course. But it remained the other great love of Alf's life.

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