Alf Roberts Voted Favourite Corner Shop Owner

Alf Roberts was wedded to the Corner Shop in Coronation Street from 1980 when he inherited it from his wife, Renee, until the early 1990s. In 1985, Alf dragged the Corner Shop out of the mid-1960s and into the mid-1980s by converting it into "Alf's Mini-Market", but the words "CORNER SHOP" appeared for the very first time on the main sign above the door - and remained there. When he retired, he took the bacon slicer with him as a souvenir. So devoted was he, that he bought the shop back again after the untimely death of its new owner in 1993!

Well, this news is slightly out-of-date, in fact it happened in May, but we're finally doing some updates here and, as you know, being a retro Coronation Street blog, our updates usually concern the past, and this one is no different!

We were delighted to discover that Alf Roberts was voted by Coronation Street Blog readers as their favourite Corner Shop owner (read all about it here). Alf, played by Bryan Mosley, had ploughed money from his house sale into the Corner Shop when he married Renee Bradshaw in 1978. She was tragically killed in a road accident in the summer of 1980, and from then on he was wedded to it - even after he married Audrey Potter in 1985! 

We didn't like the way Audrey treated Alf, by the way. We love Audrey and we love Sue Nicholls and we wouldn't be without them in the show, but if a man had been shown treating his wife like that there would have been uproar. The marriage was uncomfortable viewing for us, evidence of the casual misandry and double standards which still plague us to this day.

We sang Alf's praises in 2010 on this blog (here) and we're so happy that his time as owner of the Corner Shop is so fondly remembered by Coronation Street Blog fans too.

Here's to the memory of Alf, and Bryan Mosley - the actor who brought him to life on-screen.