Those TV Times... 1981... Hilda Wants To Move...

How evocative of past times are pages from old TV listings magazines! Look at this! November 1981! Quincy!

Bliss!  

Bullseye - in its very first series and yet to gravitate to its legendary Sunday teatime slot!   

Unforgettable!

Astronauts and 240-Robert!

Eh?

Well, I remember the latter - dead good it was, an American import with a "a beautiful chopper pilot and two special cops trained to take on any emergency. Whenever someone's in trouble, they call in 240-Robert."

Brillo.

But Astronauts? Nope. But then I was never a Goodies fan, so a comedy by Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden would probably not have appealed and it's unlikely I ever tuned in.

And in Coronation Street, poor old Fred Gee was hanging onto the Community Centre flat, whilst Hilda Ogden had developed an upwardly mobile wanderlust and wanted to leave No 13. She and Stan went to look at a new house, and Hilda told the estate agent that it had "atmospherics".

Bless her!

And look at that ad for VHS/Beta Video Films! Heck - only about 5% of UK households had a VCR in 1981, and the race was on between Beta and VHS to become the best selling tape format.

Different days indeed...

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...

Coronation Street - A Typical Saturday In 1961...

From the TV Times, 1961, part of the series of articles published in that magazine to celebrate The Street's first year on air. This is a typical Saturday on the Street way back then - with Ken showing Frank Barlow a letter from David, Harry Hewitt cleaning the windows at No 7 and chatting with Concepta and Len Fairclough, Jack and Annie Walker out for a morning stroll, Elsie Tanner giving son Dennis a right lambasting for being a layabed, Christine Hardman being greeted by Mr Swindley and Miss Nugent, corner shop owner Florrie Lindley taking a break from sweeping the flagstones to chat with Esther Hayes and Albert Tatlock, and Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst clocking everything on't corner. And where was Ena Sharples? you cry. Apparently off visiting her daughter and grandson. We hope it was a happy visit - but knowing Mrs Sharples in the early 1960s (fierce wasn't the word!) we wouldn't bet on it!

The Coronation Street District - Weatherfield, 1961

TV Times celebrated a year of Coronation Street in 1961, with a series of articles and illustrations. The above pic is an aerial view of the Coronation Street neighbourhood in 1961. Of course, it differs from what we might expect. Arkwright Street, family home of that upwardly mobile little madam Sally Seddon in the 1980s, hadn't been invented, there was a cinema just round the corner, and St Mary's Church was just opposite the corner of Coronation Street! Rather like St Clement's Church was opposite the corner of Archie Street, the street which provided inspiration for Corrie's architecture. A further attempt to depict the neighbourhood in a 1976 TV Times also had its problems as it moved Len Fairclough's yard out of Mawdsley Street! But then mistakes happen and in recent years soap history is often rewritten anyway.

I love the map above - take a stroll round Weatherfield as it was then envisaged - call in at Gamma Garments - where Miss Nugent is no doubt admiring Mr Swindley's antimacassars, note the posh bay window at the side of the Rovers Return (Annie Walker must have been chuffed to little mint balls!), and do a shift at Elliston's Raincoat Factory, having a Corner Shop barm cake for your dinner break. But be warned - I'd avoid the vestry at the Mission Of Glad Tidings if I were you!

1984: Curly Fizzles Out

From the TVTIMES Soaps Page by Alan Kennaugh, 3-9 November 1984:

To be perfectly honest, 'fireworks' is not a word you would normally associate with Curly Watts of Coronation Street. He's a nice enough lad, but he lacks real fizz and sparkle.

This week though it's time for the Bonfire Night celebrations, and Curly (played by Kevin Kennedy) is getting poetic about fireworks and telling his mates in the Rovers all about Guy Fawkes. He's stumped, however, when someone asks why we burn effigies of Guy.

In fact, Guy was said to have planned to blow up Parliament on 5 November 1605. He was arrested twenty-four hours earlier and executed two months later. We've been burning his effigy ever since.