November 23, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

CORONATION STREET
By Mark Samms

LONDON, November 23, Graphic News: THE Spice Girls may lay strident claim to the invention of girl power, but they are brash latecomers to a movement that was well under way long before any of them were born.

As far as British television is concerned, it all began on December 9,1960 when a nation busily preparing for Christmas scarcely noticed the arrival of a new drama series based on a grimy backstreet in the fictional northern town of Weatherfield.

Initially it was commissioned for a few weeks. Now, 40 years later, Coronation Street is an institution. It is shown in 25 countries throughout the world, is the longest-established program of its kind anywhere, and owes much of its extraordinary success to an unforgettable gallery of strong female characters lovingly crafted by one man -- Tony Warren.

It was no coincidence that viewers were introduced to two of the most enduringly popular within minutes of the series beginning all those years ago.

Battleaxe Ena Sharples, a monument of glowering disapproval, in hairnet, topcoat and sensible shoes, swept in to terrify the new owner of the corner shop, Florrie Lindley.

Just down the street, local tart-with-a-heart, Elsie Tanner, was engaged in the first of many verbal skirmishes with her shiftless son Dennis.

Nobody knew it at the time, but both Ena and Elsie, played with great deftness by Violet Carson and Pat Phoenix respectively, were to become role models for similar Street characters down the years.

The role of resident shrew was eventually assumed by Hilda Ogden. Whereas Ena had been a widow for many years, Hilda had to contend with husband Stan, an occasional window-cleaner with a penchant for a beer and permanent back trouble. Actors Jean Alexander and Bernard Youens developed their relationship into a tragi-comedy masterpiece, and they became the two people who embodied the humour, pathos and forlorn optimism that has been the mainstay of so many storylines throughout the years.

As harridan and hapless hubby, they were eventually succeeded by Jack and Vera Duckworth, another couple who initially clung to the wreckage of their unhappy union because neither had anywhere else to go, eventually acquiring an unlikely warmth and mutual dependence. Still the laughs kept coming.

When Elsie Tanner became too old for active duty, a new buxom man-eater arrived. She was Bet Lynch, whose generous disposition was accompanied by a towering coiffure, a fathomless cleavage and a turn of phrase that could shrivel men where they stood.

Her years as barmaid at the Rovers Return saw the evolution of yet another superb double-act of the type that has characterised the success of Coronation Street over so many years. She was perpetually at odds with snooty landlady Annie Walker, whose social aspirations soared way beyond the environs of a backstreet pub.

It is ironic that in a soap opera so well served by women, the only ever-present character is a man. We have watched Ken Barlow, played by William Roache, grow from a socialist student with a million dreams, to a paunchy, principled, Lothario with a thousand regrets (not to mention three wives and 21 girlfriends).

He and shady factory boss Mike Baldwin have enjoyed an increasingly rancorous relationship, but even that has been dominated by women they have both loved, lost and every now and then, married.

Even now, as the Street continues to accommodate more gritty story lines to counter the threat of younger and more boisterous rivals, it is still the women -- like Linda Baldwin, Rita Sullivan, Janice Battersby, Audrey Roberts, Gail Platt and Natalie Barnes -- around whom most of the action tends to revolve.

Good try, Spice Girls, but others got there first.
/ENDS