Coronation Street

Coronation Street is Britain's longest-running television soap opera, and the UK's consistently highest-rated show. It was created by Tony Warren and first broadcast on the ITV network on Friday December 9, 1960. The working title of the show was Florizel Street, but Agnes, a tea lady at Granada Television, Manchester, (where Coronation Street is produced) remarked that "Florizel" sounded too much like a disinfectant. Jubilee Street was another option considered.

Humour

Since its launch, Coronation Street has become famous for its humorous storylines. These include the notoriously prissy, reserved and plain Mavis Riley (Thelma Barlow) having not one but two suitors throwing themselves at her, while she in true Mavis-mood cannot make her mind up between them, saying her catchphrase, "oooh, I don't knooooow". When she finally decides to pick one, she ends up being named as the 'other woman' in a divorce case! When she and Derek finally agree to marry, both fail to turn up at the church, where hundreds of their friends are waiting. When Derek is offered a company car by his new company, which manufactures stationery, it is a lime green car with the company logo on the side and a large plastic paper clip on top. They fill their garden with kitsch decorations, only to have someone "kidnap" their garden gnome and send letters demanding payment of a ransom. They then receive photographs of their kidnapped gnome photographed at famous world monuments.

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Another comic creation from the early 1990s, Reg Holdsworth (Ken Morley), who was rapidly balding, tried to look more virile by getting an appalling toupée, which he thought would "draw the ladies".

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In 2002, one of the comedy storylines involved a notoriously homophobic loudmouth character, Les Battersby (Bruce Jones), whose wife has left him, taking in a male lodger, only to be informed by the local council (who owns his house) that in taking in a lodger he has broken his tenancy agreement and must move. To hold on, he and his dimwitted teenage lodger decide to pose as a gay couple, with what they imagine a gay couple's home would be, with hilarious results, all the more so when his estranged wife Janice (Vicky Entwistle), worried that he might lose his house, returns to pose as his happily married wife. She walks in on a house turned into a shrine to Judy Garland and Liberace, to be asked by the Council official "was it when your husband 'came out' that the marriage broke up?" She blows her husband's totally unconvincing scam by erupting into laughter. "Les. Gay? LES? Les is not gay. Les?"

Related Topics:
2002 - Bruce Jones - Vicky Entwistle - Judy Garland - Liberace

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Another storyline involved efforts by locals to stop Council plans to turn an open space (the "Red Rec", red indicating the amount of blood spilt there during a battle in the English Civil War, according to the storyline) into a housing development and stadium complex. The normally reserved Emily Bishop, spurred on by her environmentalist nephew, Spider Nugent (Martin Hancock), ends up staging a sit-in up a tree alongside other youthful environmentalists, aided by local "conscience" Ken Barlow and local history expert Roy Cropper (David Neilson).

Related Topics:
Martin Hancock - David Neilson

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In recent years a running gag has developed on the show involving Fred Elliot's tendency to propose marriage to any lady that he gets involved with, usually under the most bizarre circumstances and having disastrous consequences for Fred. This long-running gag began in 1996 when Fred proposed to Rita Sullivan, who turned him down. Since then Fred has proposed to:

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• Maureen Holdsworth (former wife of another comic character, Reg), who actually married him only to leave him ten days later for another man;
• Audrey Roberts, whom he proposed to while in France, only to have her turn him down;
• Eve Sykes, who also married him, only to turn out to be a bigamist;
• Doreen Heavey, the mother of Fred's daughter-in-law Maxine, whom Fred proposed to while they were both drunk;
• Penny King, who was having an affair with Fred's best friend Mike Baldwin.

A storyline from May 2004 saw Fred order a bride from Thailand through an acquaintance, only to learn that she was a con artist.

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