There's a fantastic interview with Coronation Street writer Jan McVerry online today.
Jan has written more than 200 episodes of the show. She hails from Liverpool and is interviewed in YMLiverpool about putting a scouse stamp on Corrie, about how she got her big break, her favourite Weatherfield resident and how she helped create one of telly’s nastiest villains too!
Jan began her working life on Corrie as a storyliner where she's worked on and off for over 20 years .
What was the writing setup like when you first joined?
It was very hierarchical. There was only one woman, and three older white men who really dominated the stories. I was told when I joined ‘don’t speak for the first three months – storyliners don’t speak for the first three months’. I was like ‘what if I’ve got a good idea?’, but it was very much ‘know your place’. Coming from Liverpool though, I spoke in the first meeting of course!
Who is your favourite character to write for on the show?
Currently it’s David Platt, played by Jack P. Shepherd. He’s such an amazing actor; you can give him everything. His humour is so dark, bleak and brilliant. He’s very funny and dry but you can give him amazing dramatic stories and he will just play them so brilliantly.
I quite often work with another Liverpool writer, Jonathan Harvey, and together we pitched a story for David which was a male rape story. Jack played it absolutely brilliantly – it was really fantastic. I would say David is my favourite character [to write for], but prior to that it was Pat Phelan because I invented his character.
Pat Phelan has been voted the soap’s greatest ever villain by fans. What gave you the idea for the character?
The man who was building the extension on my house told me about the cowboy builders he’d worked for in the past. He told me about serial bankrupt offenders who stiff people all the time and I just thought it would be great for a character. We wrote a story about Gary Windass (Mikey North) and Owen Armstrong (Ian Puleston-Davies) who were running a small building firm, when Pat Phelan comes along. The story was only meant to last a fortnight, but he was so brilliant that six months later one of our writers pitched a two-year story which brought Pat back as a much more sinister character who was going to torment the Windass family. It ended up being one of our most popular stories – it was brilliant.
There's a whole lot more to the interview and you can read it all here
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