Sarah Barlow tells her uncle Stephen Reid that she’s sent a video to the family WhatsApp group (yes, Platt Chat is a thing) of her gran Audrey Roberts doing a karaoke version of Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton. Now we know where Gail Rodwell gets her bathroom singing habit from.
Salford-born actor Albert Finney gets a name-drop by Edison Bailey in The Rovers, although he actually means the footballer Tom Finney. The five-time Oscar nominee played a working-class machinist in the 1960 film adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. Sillitoe was part of the Angry Young Man movement, which helped to ease the way for socially conscious kitchen-sink drama. Coronation Street both benefitted from and contributed to the trend, although Corrie creator Tony Warren – also a Salfordian and born within two months of Finney – was more drawn to depicting the lives of strong-minded women than disaffected males.
Speaking of strong-minded women, Evelyn Plummer is working in a charity shop. When she’s asked to put the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks and Rothmans Football Yearbooks on the shelves in date order, she picks up a cricket bat and – shades of Kelly Neelan’s recent brandishment of a baseball bat – considers hitting the shop manager’s head through mid wicket.
Sarah says she’s going to the cinema to see a ‘thriller about a ski team preparing for the Olympics’. There are a surprising number of piste-based actioners, so it”s a mystery what she’ll be watching. It might even be a film that only exists in the Corrieverse, like the zombie TV series Zombezi. Let’s just call it Skimageddon and be done with it.
There’s one more thespian name-drop, this time by Bernie Winter when she’s called upon to impersonate Fern Lindon for a court appearance. ‘Who do you think I am? Meryl Streep?’ asks Bernie. Well, if Sir Ian McKellen can be in the Street, why not Streep?
Coronation Street episode 10753/54. Originally aired 26th Sept 2022.
