Suzie Birchall - Screen Capture Request

Mike has written to ask for a screen capture of the lovely Suzie Birchall (Cheryl Murray). Certainly, Mike - here she is in 1979. Suzie was a great favourite of mine - a cynical '70s teen, very much of the times, but not a bad lass underneath it all.

However, by Street teen standards, she was pretty naughty and was known in my neighbourhood as Suzie Bitch-all!

Her attempt to bed Gail's Brian on her return in the early 1980s confirmed the appropriateness of the nickname.

But what a great character!

We'll be featuring some material about Suzie and her final departure from the Street soon.

1979: The ITV Strike - ARRGGGHHH!!!

The Daily Star, August 28, 1979 - "Shake Down To 1979" - yeah, right! The ultimate year of that grim decade brought us the murder of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and a host of other grisly events.

You couldn't even watch your favourite soap to escape the grim realities from August to October as ITV was knocked off the air by a technicians' strike.

And in those days we only had three TV channels and, as BBC2 was decidedly "minority interest", that left the vast majority of us with BBC1. Videos? Sadly not. Only 5% of UK households had a VCR in 1980, they were expensive beasts, so in 1979 we were really stuck. Should we read? Should we talk? How could we spend our time without ITV? I fidgeted. And moped.

How I missed The Street! I ached for it! Deirdre had just received a letter from husband Ray in Holland that had reduced her to tears. What was going on?

Well, it seems life in The Street was continuing in our enforced absence...

From the Daily Star:

Coronation Street's best kept secret is out... Brian and Gail have got married.

And the Daily Star has beaten the ITV blackout to bring millions of Street addicts exclusive pictures of the happy event.

They were snapped by housewife Mary Watson, of Rutbleglen, Glasgow, who spotted the "wedding" party while visiting her sister in Salford.

"I couldn't believe my luck," said Street fan Mary.

"I was wondering what had happened to Brian and Gail - then suddenly there they were in front of me."

The stars came out in force to watch Gail - actress Helen Worth - and Brian, played by Christopher Quinten, tie the knot.

Gail wore white, and Brian's mum and dad, Bert and Ivy (Peter Dudley and Lynne Perrie) looked suitably impressed.

Cheryl Murray, who plays Gail's sexy pal, Suzie Birchall, made a radiant bridesmaid.

Said Mary: "I couldn't resist taking the pictures. The blackout may go on for ever, and some people would never know what had happened to the couple."

A spokesman for Granada TV said last night that they had been "swamped" with inquiries about Brian and Gail since the technicians' strike forced the show off the air two weeks ago.

Now you can stop biting your nails, folks, thanks to Mary's candid camera.

Say "Cheese!"

The wedding pic! Left to right: Audrey Potter (Sue Nicholls), Suzie Birchall (Cheryl Murray) Gail (Helen Worth) and Brian Tilsley (Christopher Quinten), and Ivy (Lynne Perrie) and Bert Tilsley (Peter Dudley).

Here's Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear) and Len Fairclough (Peter Adamson) welcoming us back to The Street after the Strike had ended in October 1979. This was a special "reminder" scene, screened just before the first post-Strike episode was shown.

Len was alone at first: "Welcome back! We've missed yer! Now, I suppose I'd better remind you what was going on in our little street when you were here last. Well, there's always a bit of excitement about a wedding - can't imagine why! Gail and Brian are about to get hitched..."

As Len ran through current events, Bet, apparently on her way into work at The Rovers, joined him and asked if he'd heard about the letter Deirdre had received "from that rat Langton in Holland".

"What letter?" asked Len.

"Mind yer own business, it's nowt to do wi' you!" Bet teased. "I suppose I'll be seeing your ugly mug in there later?" - indicating The Rovers, and after a quick farewell, she went inside.

"See what I mean? It never changes, does it? There's always something going on!" said Len to us, the telly audience. "See you later!"

And the Granada logo flashed up and the opening credits began, and we Corrie junkies settled back for our first fix in ages.

BLISS!!

1978: Gail Potter, Elsie Tanner, Suzie Birchall And The Nuclear War Threat...

The 1970s were in the thick of the Cold War years. As a kid back then, I was terrified that America and Russia would go to war and that would be the end for all of us. I had nightmares about it, sweated about it, cringed at the (I thought) scary-sounding theme tunes of World In Action and News At Ten. I closed my ears as narrators and newscasters on these two programmes began to speak, convinced that the end was nigh.

I wasn't alone. My mate Pete and I often discussed the prospect of nuclear war, and we knew many other kids who shared our worries. An adult neighbour of my mine had stocked up a load of pills, which she showed us. She said she would take them when nuclear war was imminent.

I used to feel sick with fear at times. Then, for me at least, Coronation Street stepped in!

It was August 1978 and Gail Potter (Helen Worth) and Suzie Birchall (Cheryl Murray) were making a salad in the kitchen at No. 11...

Gail: "Do you think there'll be another war?"

Suzie (flatly - in a what is the silly moo wittering about now? tone of voice) "Do I think there'll be another war?"

Gail: "Do yer?"

Suzie: "How should I know?"

Gail: "They're talkin' about it, aren't they?"

Suzie: "Are they? Who?!"

Gail: "The Americans and the Russians."

Suzie: "Is that right?"

Gail: "Don't you even listen when there's News At Ten on?"

Suzie: "Only the interestin' bits..."

Gail: "Sometimes I get quite worried about it, honest I do."

Suzie (continuing her own train of thought): "... a divorce or someone dyin' and leavin' a load of money."

Gail: "Don't you care if there's another war?"

Suzie: "I don't think about it much - it don't bother me."

Gail: "Yeah, but if they do."

Suzie: "Well, if they do they wouldn't ask me anyway, would they?"

Gail: "That's the whole point, innit, they wouldn't bother askin' you, they'd just blow us all up."

Suzie: "Well, if they do ask me, I'll tell them not to bother, all right? I'll say they need their heads bangin', they should kiss an' make up."

Gail: "I think it's quite scary if you think about it."

Suzie: "Then DON'T. Is there any salad cream?"

Gail's fears continued throughout the episode, but cynical Suzie and worldly Elsie Tanner, both more concerned with getting on with living than worrying themselves to a standstill over something that might not happen, and they couldn't stop if it did, had a great effect on me.

For the first time I began to realise that I shouldn't spend time paralysed with fear over the nuclear threat. I was too young to join protest marches, I wanted to do OK in my O' Levels and basically my screwing my life up was not going to help anything.

The other day, I saw the 1978 episode of Coronation Street again and gasped as my feelings from way back then came flooding back. I remembered how terrified I was back in the 1970s, and how this episode of a soap opera helped me to get on with living.

Nowadays, other things are there to worry us and the Cold War ice, which thawed rapidly in the mid-to-late 1980s with Perestroika and Glasnost, is just a memory. When Bush and Gorbachev declared the Cold War at an end at Malta in 1989, my mother, who remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, wept with relief. And what a party we had. And what a hangover I had afterwards.

But I haven't forgotten the terrible fear I felt, and no matter how daft I find Corrie in the modern day, I still have feelings of gratitude for that one episode back in 1978...