Corrie's Tricia Armstrong shortlisted to replace MP Jo Cox

Tracy Brabin played the wonderful Tricia Armstrong in Coronation Street.

And now the has been confirmed as one of two possible candidates Labour will field in the Batley and Spen by-election.  The by-election was triggered by the death of former MP Jo Cox in June.

This is great news for Tracy Brabin, but sad news for Corrie fans. 

As our blogger Merseytart said on twitter: Selfishly I don't want Tracy Brabin to become an MP because then Tricia Armstrong will never go back to #corrie.

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Happy Returns

I'm not generally a fan of bringing back characters who are long gone from Coronation Street.  Look at the current cast: Dennis Tanner is no fun at all, and Todd has returned as some kind of predatory gay sex spider, crawling all over the street and hissing bile.  There's also the danger that you end up like EastEnders, where a roster of characters are constantly leaving forever before returning again two years later.  Sharon Watts seems to be attached to Albert Square by an invisible bungee cord.

I'd much rather the scriptwriters came up with new, interesting characters than rely on the audience's affections for old faces.

However, I would make an exception for Tricia Armstrong.  Played by Tracy Brabin, Tricia was in Corrie for only a few years in the mid-nineties, but I thought she was an interesting character and brilliantly played.  She was a scraggy, loud-mouthed piece of work, but she had a surprising heart at times and loved the bones off her two sons - Jamie and Brad.

Brad, incidentally, was a Duckworth, the result of a one-night stand with Terry.  Wouldn't it be nice to bring a Duckworth back to the Street, now that Tommy is, erm, "indisposed"?  He's about sixteen or seventeen now, so the producers could get a teen hunk who can take his shirt off on Digital Spy.  You could even bring back Terry for a bit, or at least that moon-sized humanoid who was pretending to be Terry last time he appeared.

Tricia was a good laugh, and Tracy played her with heart and humour.  When she turned up as a shelf-stacker in the Sainsbury's ads a few years ago, I was deeply dismayed.  (It also undermined the "oh she's just like you!" theme of the ads when we were all going "It's Tricia!").  She could make a return to Underworld, battling with Sally Webster, palling up with Beth for nights in the Rovers, rekindling her surprising but pleasing friendship with Deirdre.  Since she has that surname, perhaps she's related to Owen?  And since she wasn't an iconic character, a Bet Lynch or an Alec Gilroy, she won't be saddled with the baggage of expectation.

The fact that I'm able to recall her at all, when other characters of the period are happily forgotten (the Mallets?  Chris Collins?) is surely an indication that she made an impression.  Tina's old flat is going begging now...

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Writing for Soaps session at London Screenwriters Festival

Remember Tracy Brabin, who played Coronation Street's Trish Armstrong - mother of Jamie?  Tracy's gone on from acting to writing for soaps and some excellent TV drama.  Check out her profile here.

Tracy will be one of the soaps writers speaking in the Writing for Soaps session at this year's London Screenwriters Festival.  The festival takes place in that London from October 26-28th October 2012 at the London School of Film, Media Performance, Regent's College.

The Writing for Soaps session is scheduled to take place on Saturday 27th October at 3.30pm.  The schedule is here.

Also lined up to Chair the session is Yvonne Grace. Yvonne has 20 years experience in producing and script editing long running series and soaps for ITV and the BBC. She latterly Exec Produced Crossroads and before that, produced Holby City. She has also script edited Eastenders and run storylining workshops for Corrie.  Yvonne runs a script editing and writer mentoring website called Script Advice  http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk/   

Yvonne and Tracy are joined by Mr Holby City Tony McHale. 

STOP PRESS: Corrie writer Damon Rochefort now confirmed to join this soaps session. More info here.

If anyone goes along to this and would like to write us a blog post after the event about the Writing for Soaps session, please do get in touch.

Check out the festival website.

Terry Duckworth's children

Earlier this week when appearing on ITV's This Morning, Coronation Street Producer Phil Collinson surprised some by admitting he was unaware of the existence of Terry Duckworth's son, Brad Armstrong. So just for his benefit here's a brief potted history of those of Terry's offspring that we know about. Let's face it, he's spent quite a lot of time away from the Street and with his track record there's no small chance that there are others around, waiting to crawl out of the woodwork.

Paul Clayton (b. 1986)

Trombone playing milkman Harry Clayton bought no. 11 off Bill Webster in 1985 and moved in with his wife, Connie and two daughters Andrea and Sue. Andrea started seeing Terry Duckworth but her parents disapproved as they thought she should have been spending more time studying for her A levels and so the pair continued to see each other behind their backs.

The family fell out with the Duckworth's after seamstress Connie ran up a dress for Vera out of some silver lurex that Jack had acquired. Vera hated the finished article and refused to pay for it despite it having been made to her specification. The feud drove a wedge between Andrea and Terry and he tried to ease the situation by paying the bill himself. But it was too late, Andrea finished with Terry and he was stunned, especially when he found out that she was pregnant. He wanted to be involved with their child but Andrea refused and after Vera started to voice plans for her grandchild's future, the Clayton's packed up and moved to Sheffield.

Word eventually got back to Terry that his son, Paul had been born but no more was seen or heard of him until Andrea turned up at the Duckworth's in 2000 in search of a kidney donor for him. Tempted by an inducement of £25000 from Jack, Terry agreed to be the donor but at the last minute he did a runner with the money, leaving his mother to deputise for him.

Paul turned up again in 2007 when he ripped off his grandfather to buy into Lenne Battersby's restaurant which he ended up torching for the insurance money before being caught and then fleeing the country.


Tommy Duckworth (b. 9 September 1992)

Terry fetched up back on the Street in 1992 with his pregnant girlfriend Lisa Horton in tow. Terry didn't stay very long as he ended up in Strangeways on a GBH charge but got day release in order to marry Lisa. After the ceremony Terry was off again but was soon caught and jailed for three years. With Terry in prison, Lisa moved in with her in-laws and Tommy was born later in the year by caesarean section. After Lisa was knocked over by a car on the Street and killed, Jack and Vera looked after Tommy but found it a struggle. When Terry was released from prison on parole, he struck a deal with Tommy's other grandparents, Jeff and Doreen Horton and sold them his son, breaking Vera's heart.

Jack and Vera continued to see Tommy on their frequent visits to Blackpool but he wasn't seen on the Street until he returned from travelling in 2011, unaware of the deaths of Jack and Vera.

Brad Armstrong (b. 14 February 1997)

When Tricia Armstrong moved in to No.1 to look after it for Mike Bladwin in 1994, she befriended Jack and Vera. A couple of years later she met Terry who was back again to try to extract more money from Jeff Horton for Tommy and his parents, who were now running The Rovers. After Tricia got drunk one night, Terry escorted her home with pregnancy resulting.

Jack offered her money for an abortion but Tricia refused and instead Jack and Vera took in her and her son Jamie. The baby was born five weeks premature on Valentine's day 1997 in the back room of the pub, with Betty Williams acting as midwife. Tricia named him Brad after Brad Pitt and wasted no time in bouncing back at life, taking up with Ray Thorpe who she met in a club. He was quickly dropped when Terry reappeared on the scene but he had no interest in either her or his son and so pretty soon Tricia and her kids moved out of the Rovers and went to live on the other side of Weatherfield with Ray.

Are there any other missing children out there that we haven't seen or heard about for a while? There's one of Ken's kids, Daniel Osbourne, who made an all too brief appearance a while back and didn't Kevin Webster have another child sometime? I think he was called Jack.

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