Tom Mennard - The Secret Life Of Sam Tindall...

Phyllis (Jill Summers) and Sam (Tom Mennard). The great Percy Sugden Formation Dancers debacle of 1987.

Tom Mennard stepped into Coronation Street as Sam Tindall in 1985 - preparing for a local bowling tournament. He quickly became a suitor for that Weatherfield femme fatale Phyllis Pearce - but, sadly, she didn't really reckon 'im. He lacked the drive and persona of a certain Mr Sugden. Of course, our Phyllis weren't above using Sam to try and arouse a bit of jealousy in old Percy. Bowls? Formation dancing? She was that desperate she'd have tried anything. But it was all to no avail.

Never mind. Sam did try to sell his dog Dougal's services to Terry Duckworth and Curly Watts as a ratter in 1985, and in the same year he was happy to win Percy Sugden's Christmas pudding in a raffle - until Alf Roberts sat on it.

Phyllis's heart belonged to Percy - although he didn't want it.

Sam was a 'permanent occasional' character in Coronation Street from September 1985 to May 1989. He arrived unheralded as a customer at Jim's Café, and left the same way.

The triangle - Percy, Sam and Phyllis. Well, to be truthful, it wasn't that much of a triangle because old Perce couldn't stick Phyllis. But she lived in hope. Phyllis's hair looks particularly nice in this pic, we think. She was living proof that Punks didn't come up with the coloured hair theme. Pensioners had been doing it for donkey's years.

Sam was quite fun, and - sometimes carrying his dog Dougal in a bag - was a distinctive sight around the Street, although, like Phyllis, he never actually lived there.

I enjoyed Sam. Not the most fascinating of characters, but quite a gentle one, well played by the actor. Characters like that were an asset to the Street back then.

But I was already a huge fan of Tom Mennard before his Street debut and felt that his talents were rather underused on the show.

Picture it... the early 1980s... a scruffy young ratbag in a dreadful 'lad's cave' bedroom is twiddling his radio knob in despair. In those days, Radio 1 with John Peel in the evenings played 'music' that sounded like a tin bath falling down a flight of concrete steps. The scruffy young ratbag usually listened to Radio Luxemburg instead, but the reception was lousy and on this particular night he was desperately seeking something half decent he could actually hear when he happened upon the dulcet tones of Tom Mennard, talking about his mates at a pub called the Goat and Compasses and the dreadful affect fresh air could have on a body when it left a pub. You see, it wasn't alcohol at all...

I (AKA the scruffy young ratbag) listened - at first bemused and then amused.

I later discovered I  was listening to a series called Tom Mennard Tells Local Tales on BBC Radio 2. Radio 2?! Yuck, wouldn't usually give it house room, but I was going through a touch of the love life traumas at the time (don't get me started) and was in the mood to be soothed by a bit of comforting older generation daftness.

I liked what I heard.

Local Tales began in March 1981, and ran for a few years - ending sometime in the mid-to-late decade. Each tale only lasted about twelve minutes, but, although I preferred the blossoming alternative comedy scene, there was no denying Tom's ability to spin a good yarn and I was captivated.

The Radio Times synopsis for 12 March 1981 read:

Tom Mennard

Tells Local Tales

Welcome to Tom's world. The scene is the ' Goat and Compasses ', the cast - Tom, Harry , Charlie and Fred. The stories, well, they're just Local Tales. Order yourself a pint, sit down and listen. Written by TOM MENNARD Producer MIKE CRAIG BBC Manchester

The set-up was Tom doing a spot of stand-up, weaving tales of himself and his pals. There was nothing trendy or ground-breaking about it. Radio 2 was a station for fogies (it plays 1980s music these days and I listen to it regularly, so it obviously isn't for fogies anymore), but I'd always been partial to old fogey tales. Tom wrote it all himself and I think he was a bit of a genius.

Whether white-washing the local sewers or watching a male stripper on a coach outing to Blackpool, Tom, sounding like a rather more animated Sam Tindall, made me smile. Lots.

It was all beautifully droll and charmingly naïve. When hearing that the wife of a bloke in the local pub was having an affair, Tom assumed that the reason for the bloke's distress was because she'd got expensive caterers in.

Well, you would, wouldn't you?

Tom, born in Beeston, Leeds, had once been a bus driver in Brighton. He began writing scripts for local amateur village hall-style shows and in the mid-1950s began a career as an entertainer in music hall, radio and television. Through this, he first met Jill Summers and Bill Waddington - later, of course, his Street co-stars.

Tom became a seasoned stand-up comedian, appearing at venues such as the Windmill Theatre and on such telly shows as The Good Old Days with patter akin to the Local Tales. The idea of expanding the patter into a whole series of radio shows was inspired.

While The Good Old Days was shamelessly nostalgia-based, the Local Tales landed Tom and his pals squarely in the 1980s, with mentions of the Unions, unemployment and government cutbacks.

Tom had quite a lot to do with BBC radio in the 1980s. In 1980 and 1981 he starred in a Radio 4 series called Wrinkles - set in an old folks' home and written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor - who gave us the sublime Red Dwarf on TV in 1988. I didn't hear Wrinkles at the time, but I have heard several episodes since. It's fab - probably a bit ahead of its time - with distinctly surreal touches. Tom starred as the caretaker at the home. It's highly recommended. Superlative in fact (you'll get the reference if you have a listen).

Tom also had acting roles in other TV shows apart from the Street - including Dad's Army, All Creatures Great and Small and Open All Hours.

Jim's Café, 1985. Sam and Phyllis talk hotpot.

Bowls were a serious business in 1980s Weatherfield.

Tom's own rare Lhasa Apso miniature dog, Dougal, played the Dougal of bag fame in the show. Tom also kept hamsters, tropical fish and caged birds, including zebra finches, a cockatiel, canaries and a wydah bird.

Dougal even had his own bank account and fan club. Lucky lad. I wonder if he had Mr Dog for dinner?

The character of Sam Tindall was simply designed as a component of the Phyllis/Percy scenario. He was a pawn in lovelorn Phyllis's game really - her desire to win Percy's affections was so great she'd stop at nothing. The occasional Street appearances suited Tom, who was then living in Dorset. But I think he could have brought a lot of fun to a larger role, particularly if the production team had revealed the Goat and Compasses to be Sam's usual local when not pursuing Phyllis - thus revealing a hidden and hilarious life for Sam. With a bit of tweaking, Tom's tales would have fitted beautifully into the Street setting.

Tom died in November 1989. Back On The Street remembers him fondly.

Percy Sugden - A Groundbreaking Character...

1987 - Percy pokes his nose into Deirdre's business.

It just occurred to me, toying with me rubber duck in the bath this morning, that Percy Sugden, who arrived at the Coronation Street community centre in 1983, was actually quite a groundbreaking character.

Percy, played by Bill Waddington, is often written off as simply being a replacement for the dearly loved Albert Tatlock (although the two characters overlapped) and he definitely continued the "old soldier" role, although he was Second rather than First World War.

But as we've pointed out elsewhere, Percy wasn't Albert. Whilst Albert was chiefly known for moaning and miserliness (and an inner core of pure gold), Percy was a man of action - he saw himself as a righter of wrongs, and was constantly sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted.

Percy was, I believe, Corrie's first male "sticky beak" character, forming something of a bridge in older male characterisations between grumpy Albert and nosey Norris.

Can you think of any other habitually nosey male Corrie character before our Mr Sugden?

If not, caps off to Percy!

Of course, Percy sticky-beaked out of concern for the community, and an unshakable belief that he was right in most things. But we should also remember his background - the loss of his wife five years before his Street debut, and the way he cared for his niece, Elaine Prior.

We miss him.

Danger At The Corner Shop - Maya 2004 And Phyllis 1987

"When you've made gravy under shell fire, you can do anything!" says Percy Sugden (Bill Waddington) to Alf Roberts (Bryan Mosley).

Josh has written:

Much as I like this blog, don't you think it's missing out by not including the full 50 year span of the Street? After all, a lot of the best dramas and special effects have been in the last 20 years. Do you remember Maya blowing up the Corner Shop in 2004? Just how gripping was that? And it's one of hundreds of great stories in the program. The 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are fine, but they were never as gripping as the last 20 years. The dramatic content has grown tremendously, and the sense of danger keeps me on the edge of my seat like never before.

Hi, Josh!

You may have a point there, but I stick to the first three decades because I have most enthusiasm for them and want to pay tribute to the actors, writers and production teams of those times.

And hey, the Corner Shop had its fair share of dangerous scenarios in the past! Remember Sheila Birtles trying to commit suicide in the 1960s? Gail and the suspect telephone engineer in the 1970s? And as for the 1980s, well with Audrey striding about squawking with her dreadful perm, and unspeakable horrors lurking amongst the shelves, you could hardly call it safe.

Unspeakable horrors lurking amongst the shelves?

Well, yes, if your name was Percy Sugden. Often he'd go in for a purchase and a nag and a moan at Alf Roberts, only to find Phyllis Pearce (Jill Summers) scuttling towards him, having lain in wait for him behind the Super Noodles, Gipsy Creams, Hobnobs and Heinz Big Soups.

She'd suddenly poke her head up, spot the capped man with the over-active gob at the counter, and then there she'd be, stood there large as life beside her intended.

Poor old Phyllis. She never won Percy's heart, but personally I think that was a blessing in disguise.

All right, you may ask, but how does such trivia rank alongside the dramas of the explosive Maya? Well, the Percy and Phyllis scenario actually attracted Royal attention, with Diana, Princess of Wales, asking Bill Waddington at a Help The Aged charity event: "Does that woman ever catch you?"

So it couldn't have been that unremarkable!

Nay, lovey, those days were just my cup of tea...

As for Maya, I liked the character - she was different, unpredictable, kind of fun. I thought it was a shame they turned her into a bunny boiler and dispatched her.

"Does that woman ever catch you?"

Remembering Margot Bryant

Margot Bryant, Minnie Caldwell in Coronation Street from 1960 to 1976, was a great real life character - and the complete opposite to Minnie, great fictional character though she was!

Here we feature some quotes about the lady from people who knew her, and a few from Margot herself.

Whilst Minnie stayed in her home town of Weatherfield and, over the years, looked after her mother, Jed Stone and Bobby the cat, Margot had a great spirit of adventure. And whilst Minnie was gentle and whimsical, if something displeased Margot, she didn't mince her words...

"I'm tough. Very tough." - Margot Bryant

"We flew from one place to another in old Dakotas made of cardboard. Often they'd say, 'This plane is unsafe, you'd better change to another plane.' It was great fun and terribly exciting."

- Margot on her experiences in World War II as an entertainer with ENSA. She travelled through Europe and the Middle and Far East.

"Of course cats understand me. Cats are super-intelligent animals. It depends on how you treat them. If you never spoke to a child, it would never learn anything. It's just the same with cats. If you speak to them all their lives, then they understand you."

- Margot Bryant. The one thing Margot had in common with Minnie was a tremendous love of cats.

"Margot was barmy about cats. A friend of mine once telephoned me and said, 'Now I've seen everything. I've seen your Minnie Caldwell, on holiday, in Venice, feeding stray cats from a huge pile of tins, wearing a mink coat.' So I said to Margot, 'I didn't know you had a mink coat,' and she said: 'Oh, that's nothing - I've got a tiger's whisker, and what's more I went in the cage to get it!' So, anything that had four legs and whiskers... Well, obviously, we couldn't give her a tiger, so we gave her Bobby."

- Tony Warren speaking on the 1988 tribute show Minnie Caldwell Remembered.

Margot has had a strange love for animals ever since she was a child and first heard the Bible story of Daniel in the lions' den. At Belle Vue Zoo, Manchester, she went to have some publicity pictures taken with a lion cub - and ended up the best of friends with a fierce Bengal tiger which flopped down beside her like a great fur coat at her feet when she stroked him tenderly on the neck and tickled him behind an ear. Nobody else but the zoo-keeper would go near the beast.

- Ken Irwin, author, The Real Coronation Street, 1970.

Her appearance can be deceptive. Behind that gentle, old lady look there lurks a dragon of a woman. And she chuckles quietly to herself at the thought of the deception she often portrays in the meek-and-mild role which has guaranteed her a comfortable retirement in her old age.

- Ken Irwin, The Real Coronation Street.

... and so Minnie Caldwell became the character who earned so much sympathy from the viewers. What they did not know was Margot's ability to forget key words in her dialogue and substitute others that frequently made no sense. "My father had a dog once," she said. "It was a ferret..."

- Jean Alexander (Hilda Ogden) in her 1989 autobiography, The Other Side Of The Street.

I had only been in the studio a couple of days when, opening the door of the Green Room, I heard a little Minnie Caldwell voice saying, "And the car was so filthy I wrote F**** on the bonnet with my finger!" I could hardly believe my ears. "Did Margot Bryant say that?" I asked somebody. "You haven't heard the half of it!" I was told.

- Jean Alexander, The Other Side Of The Street.

She [Margot Bryant] had a way with words which was at times distinctly unladylike, and what's more she couldn't have cared less who happened to be listening.

- Bill Podmore in his 1990 autobiography, Coronation Street - The Inside Story.

"I liked her. We had our rows. Oh, we had our ups and downs. I once told her she was ruder than Ena Sharples was ever meant to be - because she'd been rude to some people that had come to watch an episode. They said, 'Hello, Minnie, my flower," and she said, 'How dare you call me Minnie, you oaf!' I was livid when I got to the dressing room. I said: 'Margot Bryant, you're ruder than Ena Sharples was ever meant to be!' And, with that, I swept off!"

- Lynne Carol (Martha Longhurst) appearing on the 1988 tribute show Minnie Caldwell Remembered.

"And Minnie was meek and docile - rather sweet, easily squashed... Margot was very sophisticated, rather arrogant, and could be very provocative..."

- Doris Speed (Annie Walker), Minnie Caldwell Remembered.

"What a pity it isn't a kitten!" - Margot Bryant to Eileen Derbyshire (Emily Nugent/Bishop) when the actress brought her new baby into the studio.

- The Other Side Of The Street, Jean Alexander.

"Certainly, she did project a sort of female WC Fields attitude, you know: I do like children, yes - on toast. I was unbelievably touched when she arrived one day and almost in a sort of shamefaced way, said: 'I've made you this.' And she had made me this little shirt for him, you see, which nobody would ever believe... I've treasured it now for twenty years and shall always treasure it because it was one of the loveliest presents I was ever given. But nobody would believe that, because never in a million years would Margot make a shirt for a CHILD, you know, a CAT yes, but..."

- Eileen Derbyshire remembers an unexpected gift, Minnie Caldwell Remembered, 1988.

There was a time when she [Margot Bryant] was having a few problems with her bank manager and he took her to lunch to sort it out. They went to a restaurant in Brighton, near where she lived, and a funeral party happened to be eating at the other side of the room. The chief mourner came solemnly over for the inevitable autograph and said, "I've just buried my wife." Margot looked at him very firmly and said, "Did anybody see you do it?"

- Bill Waddington (Percy Sugden) in his autobiography, The Importance Of Being Percy (1992).

And finally, for Minnie Caldwell Remembered in 1988, Doris Speed recalled how Margot, at that point not playing Minnie as a permanent Street character, visited her dressing room in 1960:

"She came to my dressing room, and she said, 'I've come to say goodbye.' And she wasn't looking one little bit arrogant, she was looking very sad. So I said: 'Oh, Margot, what nonsense, you'll be coming again - you were very, very good - which she was. And she said: 'Was I really?' And she welled over with tears. So there was a little bit of Minnie there, wasn't there?"

Uttered In The '80s - Part 2

Eee, 1989 - what a year! The Berlin Wall came down, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, the Game Boy was released in America, and in Coronation Street Mrs Phyllis Pearce (Jill Summers) crept up on Mr Percy Sugden (Bill Waddington) in the Rovers Return:

Phyllis: "Boo!"

Percy (furious): "I wish you wouldn't do that! I'm a coiled spring, y'know! I act very quickly and very aggressively when startled!"

Phyllis: "Ooh, I wish you would!"