Well, we've done the 1980s (Rita's amnesia) and the 1970s (the lorry crash) so now we turn to the 1960s. What was our worst and daftest story-line of that illustrious first decade of Coronation Street? Well, as with the '70s and '80s, there were several contenders, but we had to plump for the collapse of the frontage of No 7 in 1965.
Why on earth did this happen? Oh sure, it made for a bit of short-term drama, especially because Lucille Hewitt was thought to have been in there at the time (she wasn't), but afterwards it left the Street with one house less, and a gap in the terrace which exposed the ridiculously scaled-down size of the other houses.
A single bench filled the entire space.
When Len Fairclough bought the site in 1981 and set about building a new No 7, a witty reader wrote to a national newspaper:
The only people who could live in there would be Marti Caine and the Thin Man!
But other things troubled us. Why didn't the collapse destabilise the adjacent houses at all? And if we'd been Val Barlow, we'd certainly not have been happy continuing to live next door at No 9 with the baby twins, Peter and Susan. No amount of calm reassurance and technical twaddle about 'faulty main beams' from surveyors would have convinced us of the safety of the houses in that street after the fall of the No 7 frontage.
The collapse was very convenient too. After all, Harry and Concepta had left for Ireland with baby Christopher the year before. The house hadn't been empty long enough for it to collapse through neglect but, it was the only unoccupied house in the Street. How convenient to ditch it. Chuck in concern about Lucille possibly being in there for a bit of drama and Bob's your uncle!
Naff.
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