'Curly & Raquel' by the band Martha

Yesterday, ITV3 showed a significant episode of classic Corrie. Originally broadcast on 23 January 1991, it was the first appearance of Raquel Wolstenhulme played by national-treasure-in-waiting Sarah Lancashire. Introduced as “Mardy Raquel from the meat counter”, she had the dubious honour of being Miss Bettabuy 1991. 

They were very different times and Reg Holdsworth instructed his Assistant Manager, Norman Watts to talk Raquel into wearing a swimsuit to read out the winning ticket in Bettabuy's “grand trolley dash”. Her first line was shown today in an episode from 25 January 1991 when she announced it was number 986.

I can’t think of a better symbol for the juxtaposition between the glamorous and the mundane that Raquel would go on to embody with such melancholic beauty.

In celebration of Raquel's arrival on ITV3, I’d like to share an amazing song that I’ve only recently discovered. A mate of mine pointed it out to me after my recent blog on the young Curly Watts (which is still available folks, right here).

The track is  ‘Curly & Raquel’ and it’s by Martha. Not Ken Barlow’s fancy woman on the barge, but a socialist pop-punk band from County Durham.

Not that Martha but this Martha

They’ve released a couple of albums and the second, ‘Blisters in the Pit of My Heart’ - from 2016 - features the aforementioned song. Simply put, it’s marvellous.

The lyrics contain the following nostalgic Corrie references:

“All the stories that we tell,

Roy and Hayley, Curly and Raquel,

Romantic reference,

Come on, tell me what’s your preference?”

And:

“Weatherfield Mademoiselle,

Thinking back to Curly and Raquel,

On your arrival,

I can stick on the subtitles.”

It’s sort of part-homage and part-metaphor. The band gave a nice quote to DIY Mag when they explained:

“It is in essence a song that’s about love, but also being a weirdo – and we kind of looked at Coronation Street and pop culture in general because as we grow up that’s how we develop our conceptions of love… Coronation Street can be the most mundane, everyday s**t, and that’s sometimes really easy to relate to” ... “especially with Curly and Raquel because Curly was always a bit of a nerd and we really relate to that”.

The band even had a comic strip poster designed for sale on their 2015 tour. It was by Jack Fallows and was fantastic:

Without further ado, I implore you all to take four minutes to think back to Curly and Raquel with this gloriously vibrant slice of pop-punk (stream available below):

Another reason why I love this song is that the chorus nods to Billy Bragg - a major influence on the band - by lifting and adapting a couplet from ‘Greetings to the New Brunette’. He’s apparently a fan of the band. Nice!

The rest of Martha’s stuff is also worth checking out, but ‘Curly & Raquel’ will always be my favourite. It is every bit as enthralling as a trolley dash up and down the aisles of Weatherfield's finest supermarket.

By Martin Leay
Twitter @mpleay
Corrie Blogs @ bit.ly/corriemartin

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Coronation Street barmaid receives OBE

Sarah Lancashire, who played Racquel Watts in Coronation Street, received her OBE this week.

Sarah received the accolade for services to drama from the Duke of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace. She said she had been nervous because, she said: "I don't do things like this very easily. I wish my father had been alive. I think at times like this, really, one tends to focus on parents and my father would have been the proudest man in the world.

"It's very difficult because you are in these most spectacular surroundings and you are trying desperately to take it all in but your head is full of white nose because you don't want to fall over when you courtesy. It's wonderful."

Read the full story at BBC News

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Top 25 Favourite Corrie Females - No. 17

17. RAQUEL WATTS (173 VOTES)

Duration: 1991-1996, 2000

Played by: Sarah Lancashire

2012 character poll position (women): 23

Introduced as an assistant at Bettabuys supermarket, working alongside the likes of Curly Watts, Reg Holdsworth, Vera Duckworth and Ivy Brennan.

She was later hired as a barmaid at the Rovers and formed a close friendship with landlady Bet Gilroy and fellow barmaid Betty Turpin. She also dabbled in modelling.

Soon enough, Raquel was in a relationship with Des Barnes. She was heartbroken when ex-wife Steph turned up as he hoped for a reconciliation. Time and time again Des and Raquel would rekindle their relationship, only for Des for dump her when he got a better offer. 

After failed relationships with Gordon Blinkhorn and Wayne Farrell, she married friend and confidante Curly in 1995. But the aching truth was that she didn’t love him. She still loved Des, for all his faults. 

She confessed to Curly her real feelings, but he forgave her. They had a happy marriage until she left him – not for Des, but for a job in Malaysia. She made a brief return in 2000 to let Curly know that they had a daughter called Alice. Raquel was by then living in Paris.

Ditzy Raquel’s notable scenes during her tenure include having French lessons with Ken Barlow in the Rovers backroom and having a conversation about football with Alma Baldwin and Denise Osbourne in the Rovers bar. She is undoubtedly a classic Corrie character.

A fan of Raquel?

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Does prejudice towards soap actors still exist?

There are comments over on Digital Spy from former Coronation Street actress Sarah Lancashire on what she describes as a "ludicrous prejudice" towards soap actors.

Lancashire, who played the wonderful Raquel in Corrie for six years in the 1990s, has of course gone on to appear in a long line of successful television dramas since her departure. While the actress does not rule out a return to Corrie in the future, she does state that she sees soap operas as a good training ground before moving on to other things.

So do you agree with Sarah Lancashire that soap actors are not treated with the respect they deserve?

Does this prejudice still exist even though recent times have seen the likes of Katherine Kelly go on to great things? Also, would you like to see Sarah back in Weatherfield one day?

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What a drunk Bet and Raquel can teach today's Corrie writers

I came across one of my most favourite Coronation Street scenes the other night and I felt it was worth a blog post all of its own. I'm sure many of you will have seen it before, however it definitely stands up to repeat viewings. You can view the scene here.

Bet and Raquel are two of Corrie's best loved characters and their onscreen partnership in the Rovers during the 1990s was a joy. There was always humour mixed with touches of vulnerability. Julie Goodyear and Sarah Lancashire sum up what's best about Corrie in this scene. The performances are spot on, the acting is terrific. You can tell both Julie and Sarah are having fun with their characters. It is also written beautifully. Time is taken to set the scene up and it meanders along with nothing much happening. It's not the wham bam of today. It's funny and a little bit sad and is probably something a lot of viewers could and can relate to, and that for me is Corrie at its finest.

Betty Driver once said that while she would always love Coronation Street, she did miss the times in the Rovers where the regulars would chat together in long scenes where nothing much happened. It strengthened the sense of community and made it feel real. We do see a bit of that now and again, but for me the action nowadays is far too plot driven. 

So Corrie writers, let's take a page out of Bet and Raquel's book. Let's have more Streetcars scenes with Steve, Lloyd and Eileen discussing nothing much of anything and having a laugh. Let's see Liz and Deirdre chewing the fat in the Rovers, Rita and Audrey musing over their rich histories. There's so much material to be explored and it doesn't all have to revolve around Tina flamin' McIntyre and pathetic Peter Barlow!


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New BBC series starring ex Corrie cast

There will be a new BBC series going into production this year, a romantic comedy called Antony and Cleopatra. It's got several Coronation Street links including former Corrie actors Anne Reid (Val Barlow) and Sarah Lancashire (Raquel Watts).

It is written by ex- Corrie writer, Sally Wainwright and it is about former childhood sweethearts who meet up 60 years later and reminisce about what could have been while the lives of their children are in upheaval around them. Anne Reid's co-star is veteran actor, Derek Jacobi.

You can read more about the series here. I think this sounds like it will be worth checking out. The rest of the cast is excellent too. The series will be aired on BBC One later this year.


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50 Years Of Corrie In 50 Days – 1996

Day 36 of our 50 day countdown of Coronation Street - written by blogger Sunny Jim.

With its ratings share declining, ITV decided that they needed to spread their most successful programmes further and insisted on a fourth episode of Coronation Street being produced, to be shown on Sunday evenings. With only so many hours in a day and with weekend shooting already having become commonplace since the switch to three episodes per week a way had to be found of accommodating the extra episode into production schedules. The result was that it was decided to do away with the producer/technical rehearsal that had been a feature of the Street from day one. This technique of rehearsing immediately before shooting a scene was already a feature of location shooting but now it would be brought to the studio.

Most of the cast had no real problem with the new process as despite the extra scenes required for the fourth episode, the rejigging of the schedule would actually mean they had more free time. The writers were more concerned however. By holding a technical rehearsal some days prior to the actual filming they were able to watch the rehearsal and make adjustments to the script if a line could be improved or if an actor had taken something the wrong way. Also there was a loss of continuity as the scenes were no longer filmed in transmission order, so actors would sometimes lose their knowledge of where a scene was going and how it all sat within the overall story. This was especially true if an actor had a heavy workload and only bothered to read their own scenes and so didn’t really understand how they fitted with everybody else’s.

Furthermore, the amount of story material had to increase and consequently, as we have seen over the years, the stories move further from the viewers’ own reality, which initially drove the programme, to a point where suspension of disbelief is stretched to breaking point. Finally, the extra episode didn’t sit well with the audience. Viewing figures for the new Sunday episode were always lower than the Monday, Wednesday and Friday programmes. Despite Friday regularly ending with a major cliff-hanger to try to draw the audience in on Sunday, people never really got used to the weekend scheduling.

One cast member who was uncomfortable with the switch was Sarah Lancashire who played Raquel Watts. As a popular character she was much in demand on screen and had been carrying long running storylines for months without a break. She announced her decision to move on and left a week before the first Sunday episode was transmitted in November. Raquel took up aromatherapy and hired the back room at the salon to work with clients. Then she decided to enrol on a course in Maidenhead and shocked Curly when she returned much more confident that when she left. She had an interview with an international firm and was offered a job in Kuala Lumpur. Curly put on a brave face when she broke the news in floods of tears but inside he was heartbroken. Before leaving she left Curly a pile of ironed shirts with her wedding ring sitting on top and after giving the Street one last sentimental look, turned to Judy Mallett and said: ‘Look after him.’

Also in 1996: Jim McDonald hits Liz; Steve McDonald gets sent to the big house for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice; Liz catches the eye of Frazer Henderson; Alec Gilroy returns and opens Sunliners travel agency; Fiona Middleton buys the salon; Terry Duckworth sells Tommy again; Terry gets Tricia Armstrong pregnant; Audrey Robert’s estranged son, Stephen Reid, turns up; Norris Cole buries Angela’s golf clubs in the Wilton’s allotment; Don Brennan attempts suicide.

Same again, is it? Picture this face behind the bar at the Rovers

Can you guess which former Coronation Street actress this is? Look closely. You won't have seen her character on Corrie without make-up like this but that dimple in the chin should look familiar. Yes, it's Sarah Lancashire who used to play barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme.

Sarah has gone on to a good many projects since leaving Corrie and this is her latest one to hit the screens. She plays the housekeeper and narrator in ITV's new remake of Wuthering Heights, the torrid tale of Cathy and Heathcliff which airs Monday August 31 and Tuesday September 1.