The ‘Street’ goes Down Under

Coronation Street, sold to Australia last November, is already a tremendous success Down Under. Here ALISTER WILLIAMSON who is now a personality in ‘‘The Street” as club manager Gus Loman, talks to Brian Finch about the Australian audiences

JUST think of it. A big, fat, easy chair on the verandah, outlined against the sunset. The temperature hovering in the eighties.

An iced beer at your elbow. And the smell of the orange blossom slinking tantalizingly round the television set.

Not the sort of environment in which you would expect to watch this week’s episode of Coronation Street. But it’s the way thousands of my fellow – Australians must have been following the programme over the past few months.

And it’s to the “Street’s” eternal credit that it has been able to establish itself as one of the top shows on the Australian network, despite the fact that the sooty, terraced houses and the way of life of their inhabitants are about as familiar to most Aussies as mountains on the moon.

Mind you, Australia does have its terraced houses.

But most Aussies live in bungalows with plenty of space in between and plenty or room to breathe. They have to — the weather is sb hot.

Australians have what they call their “backyards”, just like people do in Lancashire. But a backyard Down Under would be called a garden in Britain.

My backyard back home had lemon trees in it—and the lemons were so plentiful that anybody in the neighbourhood was welcome to help themselves.

Australia has its Rover’s Returns. But the licensing laws are very different there.

Up to a few years ago, for instance, the pubs closed at six o’clock in the morning [sic: evening – Ed] — and were almost the exclusive preserve of men. Ena, Minnie and Martha wouldn’t have gone much on that!

Even today in some areas the pubs close at six. But they usually open much earlier in the day than British pubs, so I suppose that compensates our hardened drinkers.

Maybe one reason why Australians have taken to Coronation Street is because most of their streets tend to be tightly-knit little communities, too, where everybody knows everybody else and folk are always ready to help each other out in an emergency.

But the social habits of Australia are completely different.

My country is a big, brawny open-air kind of place and cosy chats around Elsie’s living room fire don’t happen very often.

An Aussie family with a couple of hours on its hands is much more likely to pile into the battered old family car and shoot off to the seaside or the country for the evening.

Nobody seems to do much betting in Coronation Street and that would amaze most Australians.

A bob on the nags is the breath of life to most Aussies. And if Coronation Street was situated in Australia one of the focal points of local activity would almost certainly be the local bookie.

He would run his business — illegally — from his own front room and be raided about once a fortnight by the police.

But he would pay his fine with a smile and be right back in business the next day.

If Coronation Street was in Australia, Ena Sharpies would be very much in demand, too — as a pianist. My countrymen love to make their own entertainment and anyone who can play a piano is guaranteed plenty of invitations to parties.

Miss Nugent would be brought out of her shell and at a party even Mr. Swindley would have to provide a party piece.

At Australian parties everyone gives a turn. And the worse they are, the better they go over! You might think that the strong North of England accents in the programme would baffle most Australians. But I don’t think they are proving much of a problem.

Most of the people back home seem to know at least one Northerner. And Northerners never lose their dialect — even on the other side of the globe.

The most important contribution to Australian life that Coronation Street is making is educational.

In the mind of the average Australian, England is a green, moist country, choked with cute little churches, ancient abbeys and castle ruins.

The sombre and occasionally harsh portraits of life in Coronation Street have helped to shatter that illusion and provided a realistic picture of life in a large slice of Britain today.