Coronation Street: Feminism, The Gay Creator, Misandry And Rita Fairclough The Liar...

The scriptwriter of a Coronation Street episode in the early 1990s had no qualms in rewriting history to make our Street favourite Rita Fairclough out to be a victim of an insensitive husband, while actually making Rita seem like a downright liar, touting for sympathy, to those of us who knew the plot.

Back in 1981, Rita suddenly discovered a strong maternal instinct. True, she had looked after Harry Bates's kids some years before, but streetwise Rita had always seemed quite happy without kids of her own, telling Mavis there would be no patter of tiny feet at No 9 after she married Len.

In 1980, when Rita walked out on Len, her concerns were for a 'decent' house and a dishwasher - not kids.

But in 1981 Rita babysat Nicky Tilsley, and suddenly went all broody. She told Len she wanted to adopt, and Len, at first stunned and incredulous, very quickly agreed. Then the couple found out they were too old, and fostered instead.

But in the early 1990s, Rita told Sally Webster that by the time Len had agreed on adoption, they were too old.

A huge difference.

Also in the 1990s, Bet Gilroy and Rita had a huge barney in the Kabin. Bet pointed out that it was Len's money that got her started. Rita stated: 'Len left me a tatty little shop!'. Yes. And money in the bank, a brand new house at No 7 Coronation Street, the builder's yard in Mawdsley Street...

We adored Rita, but the Street's scriptwriters and producers sometimes did her no favours at all. The watering down of this fabulous, feisty character in the 1980s and her subsequent victimhood at the behest of Alan Bradley dd not convince us. Rita simply did not suit that storyline. She had far too much pride to fling herself at Alan in the way she did, her tears of horror ('Just like Len!') when Alan punched somebody in the Rovers (she hadn't been averse to walloping people herself, including Len, in the good old days) and so on, partially destroyed one of the show's best ever characters and seemed to be taking chunks out of the Feminist Guide To Misandry rather than presenting real life.

Corrie making victimised heroines out of its female characters is farcical. The women are at their best when being strong, human and frequently awful, seeing the faults of their spouses and partners, not their own. Audrey telling Alma she'd married a 'big baby' in the 1990s was a classic example of this. Our beautiful Aud had been selfish, childish (locking herself in the loo in a sulk after she and Alf had been forced to move into the Corner Shop flat when the chain on the house they were hoping to buy collapsed) and generally a lazy shopaholic for years. And we loved her for it. The fact she could see none of her own faults made us love her more.

I have to say that many of Coronation Street's women are at their best when following the template laid down by the show's creator, Tony Warren, himself a gay man and not averse to a bit of camp.

Let's hear Mr Warren on the subject: 'I'd known all these queens [gay men with a penchant for camp] in the village. Some of their dialogue was too good not to use. I remember giving Elsie lines that they would say. When you think of some of the things she came out with, how many straight women have you heard say that?'

The original template - women talking like camp men. The genius - the late Mr Tony Warren.

The original scripts, with their apparently ordinary but slightly tweaked dialogue (witness Ena in the Corner Shop in 1960!), were very much this man's tribute to northern English femininity. But far more evocative of a witty evening in a gay pub with a number of camp men present than ordinary female conversation. The world was really not ready for a soap about gay men!

Coronation Street has become self consciously feminist - and as that ideology is now being questioned far and wide (men oppressed women - oh, really?!) is straying far from its roots and has been growing progressively worse since the 1970s (the Susi Hush era). Ideologies are not facts.

The Street went from being a lovely matriarchy (as many such streets are) to being the misandry mile. A great difference, relying on warped Feminist dogma to score points and create female victimhood.

So, Rita, love, don't tell lies, eh, chuck? Don't forget your marriage was under the microscope on our TV screens - we were there too - so it really doesn't wash.

For years, Feminism was not questioned. But now it is. Chivalry should not allow riding rough shod over facts and demonising an entire gender, and the facts about the vote - suffragettes bombing and harming working class, vote-less men with acid, the SCUM Manifesto, the Duluth Model and the horrors experienced by Erin Pizzey in the 1970s are being examined at long last. As are the true facts about the gender pay gap and the workplace death gap.

About time too.

So, pack it in, eh, Corrie?

The misandrist nonsense (often created by 'white knight' chivalrous men) still goes on and was one of the things which drove me away from the show many years ago.

Remember your roots.

Questioning Feminism? Heresy, eh? Misogynistic or not? Not. Read what Karen Straughan has to say on the subject and just how this hate ideology has infested every nook and cranny of our lives: 
https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/

Did Tony Warren Plan To Blow Up Coronation Street?

Percy Sugden: "This street is nothing but an eyesore, Councillor Roberts - it should've been blown up in 1960!"

Alf Roberts: "Nay, Mr Sugden, there's more bulldozers than explosions round 'ere. Now, if we were to hire a Tardis and go forward twenty-three years, well, I wouldn't want to be standing here..."

Katie writes:

Just read in the Sun that Tony Warren wanted Coronation Street blown up after 13 episodes. As Daran Little, he of the fevered imagination, said this, and I don't trust him - although he's hailed at the ultimate Corrie expert - I thought I'd ask for second, third and fourth opinions!

I've certainly read, several times in the '70s and '80s, that the Street had a demolition story-line built in as a possible early ending, but never that Tony Warren wanted it blown up or to only run to thirteen episodes!

In 1985, Tony Warren wrote in the book Coronation Street 25 Years:

"I was to go on writing to episode twelve, and plan a possible bulldozing of the Street for what might prove to be a final thirteenth episode."

I took it from that that the demolition story-line would simply have reflected the trend to pull down old terraces and build high rise blocks, and that Granada was providing itself with a get-out route should the show prove to be a disaster.

Do note that what Daran Little actually said (according to the Sun) was:

"His [Tony Warren's] vision was that, on the 13th episode, the Street would blow up, or something like that, and it would end."

What Tony Warren now has to say on the subject, I've no idea!

Only he knows what only he knows...

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?"

The Road To Coronation Street

Watched The Road To Coronation Street this evening, and what can I say? Everything was just spot on, and the tale of Tony Warren, his genius of an idea (to be called Florizel Street originally) and its first cast was definitely the highspot of my telly viewing this year.

Writer Daran Little did us proud.

I had my doubts about the casting of Jessie Wallace as Pat Phoenix, but she was simply brilliant - as was the rest of the cast. There were several moments in the show when I literally yelped with delight!

Congratulations to all concerned.