Tony Warren 1992
The Queen came to Coronation Street and she stood and
chatted to me. I really couldn’t believe it. Because they’d just rebuilt the set. And I was standing there after she’d gone. I thought: how many writers wake up one morning and they think, well, I’ll write a show. I’ll have a pub at one end of the street and I’ll have a corner shop at the other.
And they live to see it built, first of all, in the studio in just lath and plaster. Then to see it built out on the backlot once and then to see it totally rebuilt. And my goodness, there’s the Queen of England walking down it. I was dazed by the whole thing.
Then this man came up to me and he said “have you got to the third generation yet?” And I thought go away! In fact, I thought much more strongly than that. I’ve just been talking to the Queen of England!
I suddenly realized, and I said, you know, you’ve just earned yourself a gold clock. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, there’s a gold clock for anyone who asks an original question about Coronation Street and that is an original one.
Elsie begat Linda who begat Paul Cheveski. Yes, we have got to the third generation. And where would you like the clock sent? He said, we’re not short of them at the Palace. And it was the Duke of Edinburgh!
chatted to me. I really couldn’t believe it. Because they’d just rebuilt the set. And I was standing there after she’d gone. I thought: how many writers wake up one morning and they think, well, I’ll write a show. I’ll have a pub at one end of the street and I’ll have a corner shop at the other.
Gold Clock Moment
Coronation Street creator Tony Warren told me, in 1992, about Queen Elizabeth opening the show’s new set 10 years earlier. About looking at it, his realm on the backlot of Granada Studios. And then, thanks to Prince Philip, thinking about the lineage of the characters he had created.
Tony Warren lived to see another incarnation of his street – larger and in a totally new area, but the same bricks and cobbles. In 2013 the new set at Media City UK opened.
But it was still Tony’s realm, and his history. “I’m the only person here today who has been in four times to see the brand new set installed,” he told Ian Wylie (Life of Wylie). “Coronation Street hasn’t moved at all. It’s exactly where it always was. Which is wherever you want it to be inside your own imagination.”
Tony also saw the fourth generation added to his families. Not the Tanner-Cheveski family, but the Barlows. Like Linda and her mother, Ken Barlow and his parents were in the very first episode. Sixty-eight years later, he is still there. So are his children – third generation – and his grandchildren – the fourth generation.
It’s three months since I left the Street. I miss it, yes, but my routine has shifted to fill the gap it left. Will I return? Not yet. I want to know that I will stay when I come back. I don’t think I can just drop in for a visit.
