My Coronation Street life

Guest blog post by Alistair Geddes who is on Twitter: @AlistairGedddes

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Hi everyone.  My name is Alistair Geddes and I am a long-time fan of Coronation Street Blog.  I thought that I would share with you a little bit of my history with the programme that we all love.

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of my enjoyment of Coronation Street.  I can remember vividly the moment my obsession started.  It was a January evening and I had just come home from Cubs, which I wasn’t very fond of since all we seemed to do was play British Bulldogs.  The TV was on and my mother was watching avidly as a middle-aged man was counting money in an office.  The door burst open and the man was faced with two thugs, one of whom had a gun.  The door opened again, startling one of the thugs who fired the gun.  It was, of course, the murder of Ernie Bishop.  With that scene, I was hooked instantly.  I couldn’t wait for the next episode, and that evening my involvement with the Scouting movement was, for the time being, finished.

I became an avid fan, even though the high drama of Ernie’s murder soon gave way to more gently amusing stories. I became invested in the characters and read everything that I could on the programme.  If you can get a hold of it, H V Kershaw’s autobiography The Street Where I Live is a goldmine of information on the early days of the show.  Emily Bishop became my favourite character, as it was her story that first had me hooked.

I can even remember what was happening in Coronation Street during key moments of my family life: Our dog died the same day as Renee Roberts, and my brother got circumcised the same day as the lorry load of planks shed its load through the front of The Rovers Return.  His screams as he was being bathed in salt water drowned out those of Deirdre, who feared that Tracy-Luv was trapped beneath the wreckage.  In my teens, I became proficient at playing the bagpipes and was asked to join a local pipe band, which practised on a Monday evening.  I only went with the proviso that my parents got a video recorder.

During the eighties, a cull of cast members due to old age, illness, and sexual impropriety led to new characters to warm to, some more successfully than others.  Chalky Whitely and the Clayton family are barely remembered, but Curly Watts is remembered fondly, and I wish he would return.  I was genuinely sad when Jack Howarth and Bernard Youens died, and when Pat Phoenix decided to move on to pastures new, but as has often been said, there is no character bigger than the Street itself.  

There was also another threat to the programme; a dour show, set in that London, which was edgier and arguably more dramatic than Coronation Street, though it lacked the humour that was Corrie’s strong point at this time.

Coronation Street has moved with the times and is no longer the cosy place, full of warm characters and humorous storylines.  It is now a different creature, led by issues and situations, rather than the character driven programme of the past.  I too have evolved, and my watching of the programme is accompanied by Tweeting allegedly amusing commentary on the action.  But I still love it and hope to be a fan for the remainder of my life.

Alistair Geddes
Twitter: @AlistairGedddes

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