Elsie Tanner's Ending....

The e-mails have been coming thick and fast, all asking the same thing: what do we here at Back On The Street make of Philip Lowrie's return to the show as Dennis Tanner? Well, although we don't watch, good luck to him. Dennis is an all-time favourite Coronation Street character, and one of the originals.

We hope the writers are good to the character and that he doesn't encounter any horrid explosions or nasty serial killers.

Be warned, Dennis lad, the Street's changed a lot since your day...

A couple of people have also asked what we make of the ending of Elsie Tanner, related by Dennis to Rita Sullivan.

Love it.

Straight out of an old Hollywood movie, and very Elsie, who mixed melodrama with margarine and crumbs on't table cloth in a way no other character ever did - or has since.

A dramatic accident - Elsie going over the cliff in a red sports car, aged eighty-one, hand in hand with the love of her life, for whom she had searched for many years, lost, found, lost and then finally, in late 1983, found again.

It's infinitely preferable to the ending offered in the VHS release The Life And Loves Of Elsie Tanner, which we are now delighted to lay to rest.

1983: Pat Phoenix At The Pineapple...

From the Daily Mirror, December 17, 1983:

Sad Elsie makes her exit

Near to tears, actress Pat Phoenix leaves a TV location after recording one of her last scenes as Elsie Tanner of Coronation Street.

Pat, who is quitting the series after twenty-three years, would not say a word as she walked away from the Manchester pub where the scene was shot.

She stretched out face-down on the seat of the mini-bus that whisked her to the Granada TV studios 300 yards away.

Elsie is invited to leave the Street by old flame Bill Gregory, played by Jack Watson.

Bill, who gave Elsie her first kiss in the series, returns to give her the last one and provide the cue for her exit lines.

He asks her to join him in a new life abroad.

Jack said later that the scene had been "quite emotional" for both of them.

Elsie's final street appearance will be screened on January 4.

Of course, Pat Phoenix had not been in Coronation Street for twenty-three years, as the article stated. She left the show in 1973 and returned in 1976.

The 1983 pub location used for the scene with Elsie Tanner and Bill Gregory was the Pineapple, in Water Street, just up the road from the Granada Television studios.

The Pineapple was also the location for The Street's first birthday celebration in December 1961.

The pub later closed down and was bought by Granada Television.

In 1986, it was used for pyrotechnic scenes during filming of the burning of the Rovers Return story-line.

Some time afterwards, it was demolished and the site became part of the Granada Studios TV Tour car park.