Coronation Street Blog: Inside the Corrie Prop Store (Part 3 of 3)

Our friends Gemma and Michael, the Coronation Street podcasters at Conversation Street...

... were recently invited into ITV studios for a very special look around the Coronation Street set. And while there, they were given a tour of the Corrie prop store too. They have very kindly offered to share the experience with fans here on the Coronation Street Blog - and they've sent some cracking pictures too.

Gemma and Michael spoke about their visit to Corrie in a recent podcast and you can listen to it here.

The blog post is quite long and to do it justice here on the blog with all the pictures, I'm splitting their report into three parts.

Part 1 of Inside the Corrie Prop Store is here.
Part 2 of Inside the Corrie Prop Store is here.

And so, it's back to Gemma and Michael...

"Sections further into the store contained china ornaments, cuddly toys, cushions and various pieces of artwork that can be seen adorning the walls of our favourite characters' homes. When a character moves house or leaves, we were told, these things are generally retired for a year or two so that they can fade from the viewers' subconscious, before appearing again on new sets. We can attest to this, having bought a set of three red square pieces of art from Next, only to see them show up in both Dev and Tina's lounges over the years (and yes, we were able to locate them in the prop store too!).

Also of interest was a corner filled with shelves divided up by character, each containing some of their own personal items. A gaudy little angel on Billy's shelf, Deirdre-made mugs on Ken's, little Jack's cuddly dog, many of these were items that are probably used fairly regularly on screen (whether or not you'd be able to recognise them is another matter!) so are grouped together for easy access. And yes, up on the top shelf, even Emily still has a section, so let's not give up hope of her still returning one day, eh?

Now, we know what you're thinking: did we nab any sneaky 'souvenirs' off the shelves while we were there? It was certainly tempting, but we won't be having DS MacKinnon knocking on our door any time soon on the hunt for stolen goods (although, considering her recent track record in arresting the wrong person, who knows..?).

The only item we did liberate, with our guide's blessing, might we add, was a strawberry Chupa Chups lolly. This was something we found in amongst a whole load of other confectionery items that are used for scenes in The Kabin and Dev's shop.

Mixed up among them were a handful of 'fake' chocolate and sweet branded packets, which are brought out whenever there needs to be a close up of an item on screen, without fear of unintended product placement. This is also why, although there may be real magazines on Rita's shelves in The Kabin, customers are always seen browsing the likes of Hiya! and other made up publications.

Honestly, we could have probably stayed all morning in the prop store but twenty minutes is all we got (and we were only told it was fine to take pictures towards the end - cue a mad dash around the room with our phones, snapping away in the last few minutes of our tour!).

It was one of the many highlights on our day at the set, and we're incredibly grateful at being given the privilege of being invited along.

If you'd like to hear more about our time at Media City, including the stars we met, the scenes we saw being filmed and our walk along the cobbles, then tune into Episode 250 of our podcast.

Visit Conversation Street, the Coronation Street podcast