1980: Elsie Tanner Meets Meg Richardson...

ITV was 25 years old in 1980, and a meeting of soap legends took place at the celebratory event. Noele Gordon, Mrs Meg Richardson (or Mortimer) of the Crossroads Motel, met Pat Phoenix, Mrs Elsie Tanner of No 11 Coronation Street.

Noele Gordon said: 'Our paths just never crossed, but we did meet at the ITV 25th anniversary celebrations and I thought she was smashing. We got on great.'

Coronation Street 1978: The Barlow Twins: RETCON! Twins Lose Two Years of their Lives!

We recently had an email here asking us about our assertion that a Corrie retcon occurred over the Barlow twins' age in 1978. The writer had read in a 50th Anniversary Book that the retcon trend set in in the 'cynical 1980s'.

Ooh, aye, luvvie - the cynical 1980s!

Well, this was in the totally non-cynical (giggle) 1970s. It was 1978. 

The Barlow twins' age retconning was actually put right in the 1980s - in 1986, when they celebrated their twenty-first birthday.

From the Sunday Mirror, December 10, 1978:

WHOOPS! The great minds who think up Coronation Street story-lines for Granada TV have been caught out - by Sunday Mirror readers.

Two of them have spotted a flaw in the otherwise scrupulously worked-out plot of the top-rated serial.

The flaw came to light after we invited readers last Sunday to send in their Street questions.

Both Mrs JE Godwin, of South Ockendon, Essex, and Mrs R Rowland of Wardley, Swinton, Lancs, asked this question:

Why does Granada TV insist that the Barlow twins, Peter and Susan, are almost fifteen when they were born on April 5th, 1965?

Both ladies remember the date well because Mrs Godwin had twin boys and Mrs Rowland a daughter around the same time.

Granada TV were happy to own up to a bit of "fiddling".

Planners changed the age of the twins to suit a story-line involving Peter Barlow and his O Levels.

However, they do hope to correct the situation in future.

As we mentioned, this turned out to be 1986. When Susan Barlow visited the Street in 1981, she seemed set to apply for a temporary job in a wine bar in London. She was too young, going by the 1965 birth year, so the 'tweaking' obviously remained until the twins' 21st birthday of 1986.

We actually knew a woman back then who wrote to Granada TV on the subject. The letter was replied to by the Street's archivist, Eric Rosser, who stated very firmly that he had voted against the "fiddling" - or retconning as we call it today.