Coronation Street Blog: Conversation Street podcast reaches 300 episode milestone

Conversation Street, the Coronation Street fan podcast, today celebrates a milestone. It’s their 3000th episode. That’s quite an achievement! And so we spoke to Gemma and Michael at Conversation Street all about their podcast and here's what they said!

Congratulations on your 300th episode! Are you planning any celebrations for your milestone episode?

Yes! For the 300th episode, we were thrilled to be joined by Nicola Thorp for an interview. We’ve been big fans of her character, Nicola Rubinstein, since she arrived on the cobbles last Ssummer, and were thrilled to hear she was up for a chat. We ended up talking for 45 minutes or so about all manner of things: Nicola’s complex relationship with her estranged father, Pat Phelan; what it’s like to work alongside the likes of Connor McIntyre, Mikey North and Harry Visinoni; what her hopes for the future of her character are (look out, Imran!); and her recent charity work. Hopefully our listeners will enjoy listening to it just as much as we enjoyed doing it!

What have been your five highlights of running a Coronation Street podcast?

1) We love interacting with other Corrie fans, and running the podcast has given us a fantastic opportunity to get in touch with viewers from all over the world. To be honest, when we started the show, we had no idea about Corrie’s international appeal, especially in Canada, and Conversation Street has helped us to make some great pals, some of whom we’ve met in real life, like your blogger Tvor, and others who we’ve become firm friends with over the Internet.

Coming along to the Corriefest five years ago, which you can hear about in Episode 24, was also a great way for us to meet fellow Corrie fans (including Coronation Street Blog head honcho Glenda!), as was taking part in last year’s Fans vs Cast quiz at the Black Dog Ballroom in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (Episode 259).

2) The first time we realised that some of the cast of Corrie listened to the podcast was a real highlight. Although we weren’t watching back in the 80s when she first appeared, Jenny Bradley immediately made an impression on the pair of us when her character returned to the show in 2015, and we were so excited to receive some tweets from Sally Ann Matthews saying how much she enjoyed hearing us praising her character on the show. Since then, she’s become a good friend of the podcast, along with the likes of Connor McIntyre, Georgia Taylor and, more recently, Charlie de Melo.

It can be a bit nerve-wracking sometimes if we criticise parts of Corrie knowing that some of the cast are listening, but we’ve been told our unfiltered honesty about what we love and hate about the show is one of the things people like about it!

3) A combination of the first two points, really, we’ve always loved being able to interview people on the show. Our first one was with Corrie fan Mark Grant, who came on to talk about his work organising fan events in Canada, and since then we’ve chatted with fans including Jack Lewin (famous for his Lego Corrie creations), Paul Lanagan (also known as @CorrieArt on Twitter) and Inside Soap writer Kate White.

Not only that, but we’ve also been lucky enough to welcome some of the cast onto the show for interviews. Last summer, when the podcast celebrated its 5th anniversary, was a particular highlight, as we got the opportunity to chat with five cast members including Richard Hawley, Jennie McAlpine and Brooke Vincent. Check out this page on our blog for all the links to the episodes featuring interviews!

4) Living down here in Southampton, you can sometimes feel a bit cut off from the Corrie fandom, but since starting the podcast, we’ve made a number of visits up north to Manchester. Our first big trip was in Episode 90, when we drove to Manchester to tour the old set, which had recently been opened up to the general public for the first time in years. We also took the opportunity to track down some of the Corrie filming locations including the Red Rec and Audrey and Phelan’s houses, and had a slap-up meal at Jennie McAlpine’s tea rooms, Annie’s. A few years ago, we also drove up to Blackpool, a town with many links to Corrie. We stayed in the hotel outside of which Alan Bradley was knocked down by a tram, scaled the Blackpool Tower and had tea in the Tower Ballroom, and took a look at the Corrie exhibit at Madame Tussauds. A real treat for Episode 206.

5) Probably our most memorable moment so far, though, was when we got the opportunity to tour the Media City set last year, for Episode 250. Connor McIntyre was kind enough to invite us up to see the set, and we spent the day exploring the Street, watching some of the scenes being filmed, looking through the prop store and even getting to have a chat with some of the cast members. It was a huge privilege, and something we’ll never forget (we even got to take a lollipop from The Kabin as a memento!).

Well done, guys! Carry on Podcasting!

See also:

You can also read our interview with Conversation Street which we did in January 2017
Conversation Street worked out to ALL of the Corrie exercise DVDs, oh yes they did! See how they got on in their series of blogposts here.
See their behind the scenes pics from the Corrie prop store
And read their Cooking with Coronation Street blog posts here in which they (and us!) recreate some classic Corrie recipes in our kitchens at home.