The Elsie Tanner Guide To Coronation Street English

When an American friend of mine visited England in 2010, he was bemused at the variety of accents and variations of the spoken language he encountered. He took in Newcastle, the Lake District, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, the Cotswolds, Cambridge, Dorset and Norfolk and was well fuddled by the end of it. "There are so many variations of spoken English in England!" he finally told me. "For a tiny country like yours, it's amazing! And I've never known why your toffs and royalty insert inappropriate r's into words. 'Orff'. That's stupid"

Speaking as somebody without any inappropriate r's whatsoever, but a man who calls a pudding a "pudden" and, furthermore, a man well acquainted with "Dickie's medder", I couldn't help him.

When Coronation Street was launched in 1960, it must have been puzzling for people in other parts of the country to hear that wonderful Northern version of the language which I personally hold very dear (my dad hailed from "up North"). So, in 1961, the TV Times appointed Mrs Elsie Tanner of No 11 Coronation Street (who, as a native, spoke the lingo fluently) to enlighten the rest of us poor saps. Here's what she had to say, with specially posed photographs of Pat Phoenix as Elsie and, in one of them, Philip Lowrie, her unfortunate son Dennis....

Been feeling a bit mithered meself lately...

So there are you are. Cheers, Elsie! And if anybody can fill us in on the origins of 'flamin' Nora' and 'flamin' Emma', our cup of happiness would runneth over...

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.