The street where they live

Tony Warren on how he got his inspiration for his new 13-part serial

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From the TVTimes for week commencing 4 December 1960

TONY WARREN toured pubs in greater Manchester for two months. It was in the cause of television. He even worked as a barman. The result of his researches can be seen in a new fictional serial, Coronation Street, next Friday.

“Apart from listening to people in pubs and clubs,” Warren told me in his office in Granada’s Manchester studios, “I also ‘kept observation’ in an off-licence, talked to people in buses and trains, wandered through street markets, made three trips to Blackpool illuminations and went on a ‘mystery’ coach outing, which turned out to be a fourth visit to Blackpool.”

“Coronation Street” – four miles from Manchester in any direction – is a collection of seven terraced houses, an off-licence, a little general store on the corner. The back wall of a raincoat factory, a pub called “The Rover’s Return” and the Glad Tidings Mission Hall.

The houses of “Coronation Street” are representative built more than 60 years ago, with no gardens. They have six rooms… parlour, living-room, scullery, and three bedrooms, one of which has been converted into a bathroom.

Yet it is home to the 20 people who live there, and most of them would not like to change their worn surroundings for something new but less humanised.

Like all communities, the people of “Coronation Street” have their problems. There is the young man who has won his way to university and now finds his background something of an embarrassment.

One of the characters will be as new as viewers to “Coronation Street.” She has just taken over the shop on the corner, and, like viewers, she must get to know her rich assortment of new neighbours.

“The Rover’s Return” is like any pub that serves a small close-knit community.

It is not so much a pub as a communal parlour where people can tell each other their troubles, joys and hopes, as well as have a drink.

To the garrulous Ena Sharples, the kindly ex-barmaid who looks after the Mission Hall, “The Rover’s Return” is more like home. She does her job at the Mission Hall, but she is not wholly in character with the place, and, off duty, she much prefers the easy, comfortable atmosphere of “The Rover’s Return.”

The truth is that Ena is a bit of an embarrassment to the Chapel Committee but, at 70, she is the only person who will look after the hall in return for a free house and coal supply.

Warren, slim and 6ft 1in tall, paced his office, paused to stub out a cigarette and said: “Three months ago, I decided to write a serial about the North.

“I started with one household. It became two, then three, and then a whole street, and I had to add a pub, an off-licence and a place of worship.”

He emphasised: “I am not having a joke at the expense of the people in the North. What I have aimed at is a true picture of life there and the people’s basic friendliness and essential humour.”

Warren is a Northerner himself. He was born in Eccles, and has lived in Pendlebury all his life, apart from five years in London as an actor.

The acting phrase of his career ended when his height increased and he was no longer suitable to play the son of the house. “Nobody wanted a son towering above them,” he explained.

A producer described him as “a bean-pole with a baby face.” So Warren took up writing. Now 24, he is still boyish-looking.

He lit another cigarette, and said: “I knew what I wanted to write, but going into pubs and clubs was the only way I could check its authenticity.

“Northerners have an enormous curiosity about everything. They’ll also tell their life story – as long as the listener is prepared to do the same.”

TVTimes listing for the first 'Coronation Street'

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