1982: When Annie Walker Met The Queen...

Flamin' Emma! The Queen? Visiting Coronation Street? Best get your glad rags on, lovey...

I've just been reading Julie Goodyear's fabulous autobiography, Just Julie, and the lady behind our favourite buxom blonde pub barmaid and landlady reveals much about what went on behind the scenes during her years in Coronation Street within its pages.

It's a lovely, lovely read.

My favourite anecdote (it was hard to choose) concerns the wonderful Doris Speed and something that happened in 1982. The new Street exterior set, bigger, better and far more complete than it had ever been before ("At last we had a real street!" said HV Kershaw), was all set for a visit from the Queen...

Julie recalled...

I FIRST met the Queen and Prince Philip in May 1982 when they came to visit the set of Coronation Street. I was wearing Diana and Charles earrings which I'd had made specially. The Duke peered at my earrings and said: "I think I recognise those two."

As the Queen came towards us, Doris Speed turned to me and said in a very loud voice: "Oh dear, isn't her make-up dreadful?" I know the Queen heard and I just wanted to die. At times I wondered whether Doris just forgot herself or did such things on purpose.

Afterwards, I asked her why she had said that. "Don't be silly, dear," she replied. "You must be hearing things!"

Darling Doris - naughty, but nice!

Sadly, Mrs Walker never made it further than Lady Mayoress. But she didn't let that deter her in her endless quest for gracious living.

1983: Fred Gee, Bet Lynch, Betty Turpin, A Car And A Lake...

Sunday Mirror, May 1, 1983:

Looking ahead to the week's TV:

Coronation Street, (ITV, 7.30). It's time for a Bank holiday spree. Fred Gee (Fred Feast) takes Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear) and Betty Turpin (Betty Driver) out for a whirl around the countryside and a picnic lunch. But it doesn't work out quite as it should.

One of my favourite Coronation Street story-lines of the 1980s was the "Car In The Lake Outing" of May 1983.

Rovers potman Fred Gee (Fred Feast), trying to be a wow with barmaid Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear), tempted her with an afternoon out - a picnic somewhere "nice". He'd take her in his Rover 2000 motor car - the one which had once belonged to Rovers landlady Annie Walker (Doris Speed).

Bet was quite keen on the idea of a picnic, but not at all keen on being alone with "Fred Face", and so invited her trusted colleague Betty Turpin (Betty Driver) along for the ride.

And a "ride" it certainly was, with the Rover ending up rolling into a lake - with Bet and Betty inside it.

And when Bet finally made it back to dry land, it wasn't that dry either - because dear old "Fred Face" dumped her down in a cow pat!

Of all the women Of Weatherfield in 1983, Betty Driver and Julie Goodyear were the most called upon in the courage and endurance stakes.

Recalling the filming of the "Car In The Lake" scenario in the book The Coronation Street Story (Daran Little, 1995), Julie Goodyear said:

"I had on a pink skirt, a jacket and a very flimsy T-shirt and some plastic beads and a pair of white high-heels, and they gave me a brown plastic bin-liner with two holes in it for my legs. I stepped into that and it was tied round my waist. And of course the water went up as soon as we went in and the bag was immediately filled with lake-water. The car sank and we were both waist-deep in very, very cold lake water."

Betty Driver gave her account of the watery saga:

"Now, me wellies were full of water to start with, and I said to Julie, 'There's a stickleback in the water here, dodging all around me. I hope to God it doesn't go anywhere else!' We were terrified and there was a swan swimming by and every time it passed the window it hissed at us and I thought it was going to attack us."

The sequence took two days to film, and Julie Goodyear and Betty Driver received congratulatory bottles of brandy from producer Mervyn Watson, with notes thanking them for their hard work.

Screen Capture Request - Bet Lynch

Beverley says:

Have you a nice screen cap of Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear) with her beehive hair in the '70s or '80s?

Certainly, Beverley. Here's the Street's beloved blonde (and buxom) barmaid in 1980. Looks a bit miserable, doesn't she?

Perhaps it was something to do with that swine of a lorry driver, Dan Jackson?

First, he was with Elsie Tanner. Then Bet made a play for him. The fur flew furiously when Elsie found out and she lambasted Bet across the Rovers bar. But Bet had landed herself (she thought) a fine catch with brash, macho Dan.

Dan wasn't with Bet long. She befriended a "fella" who lived across the landing from her bedsit, all completely harmless, a bit of company.

But Dan didn't like it. He punched the aforementioned "fella", and then took off when Bet remonstrated with him. He made it plain that he didn't regard Bet as anything very important in his life. There were plenty more women like her.

"Be lucky," he said.

Poor Bet.

She never was.