Meet Ken Barlow, a well-meaning guy with a dysfunctional family
William Roache has played the role of Ken Barlow on Coronation Street for 58 years and doesn’t intend to stop
WILLIAM ROACHE
is among the most recognizable faces in Great Britain, up there with pop stars, pro athletes and members of the Royal Family.
It’s all because of Ken Barlow, a role Roache has performed for 58 years on the iconic English TV soap “Coronation Street.”
Roach is the world’s longest-serving actor on the world’s longest running soap. He’s been with the show since its first episode aired in 1960.
As Barlow, he has weathered illadvised affairs, multiple marriages, attempts on his life and an unfortunate set of offspring.
“He’s a well-meaning guy trying to keep the peace in his dysfunctional family — which I love, I love my dysfunctional family,” Roache says about his Barlow character during a phone interview this week.
“He pretty much fails at all he tries to do, but he’s a well-meaning guy.”
Roache’s real life has been no less turbulent, suffering through family tragedies, admissions of infidelity
and run-ins with the tabloid press.
Five years ago, at the age of 81, he was charged with sexually assaulting five women when they were teens during the 1960s.
A jury of eight women and four men found him not guilty on all counts. Roache took a hiatus from the show when the charges were laid — the series had Ken Barlow go on an extended trip to Canada to take care of his grandson — but he returned to Coronation Street soon after his acquittal.
Roache has been with the show ever since and the patriarch of the Barlow clan still acts as an international ambassador. He’s currently on a speaking tour — “The Ken Barlow Effect” — that comes to The Studio at Hamilton Place on Sunday, June 3.
“I don’t talk about the court case at all, but what I will say is that life throws challenges at you and that was a big challenge, one of the biggest,” Roache, now 86, says when asked about the charges.
“What I learned from that is that if a challenge comes your way, you take it, you accept it, you embrace it, then stand on your truth, be positive and optimistic. Then you come out wiser and stronger than before it happened. That’s really all I’ve got to say on that.”
Life returned to normal on “the street.” Ken Barlow arrived back in Westfield from Canada to discover that his alcoholic son Peter had been charged with murder.
Barlow’s third wife, Deirdre, died tragically (as did Anne Kirkbride, the actress who played her part for 41 years).
Barlow then escaped death when he was pushed down a flight of stairs by an unknown assailant who turned out to be another one of his sons, Daniel.
And Barlow’s daughter, Tracy, continued to display the sort of personality traits that distinguish her as the most disliked character in the show, except, perhaps, for neighbour Pat Phelan who turns out to be a serial killer.
For sure, Roache has seen a lot of changes on the set of the street over the last 58 years. He considers Coronation Street, created by the late Tony Warren, a landmark in television history.
“When we first started in 1960, we weren’t a soap, we were part of the new realism sweeping through the theatre and the cinema with James Dean, Marlon Brando and John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” Roache says. “We were realism on television and we went straight to the top with that.”
The show’s secret to longevity has been its ability to change with the times, tackling the leading social issues of the day — race, sexism, gender identity, homosexuality, mental health and suicide.
“It’s organic,” Roache says. “As life changes, the street changes. You’ll always hear older people saying things like ‘I don’t like the street anymore, it’s not what it was.’ That’s good. If they’re not saying that then we’re not bringing in the younger people. It’s a producer’s problem. Sometimes they lurch a bit too far or sometimes they don’t move far enough. If we were as we were in the ’60s, we’d be long dead.”
For his part, Roache plans on staying with the show as long as it will have him. Back when he was in his 40s, he thought briefly about leaving the show for a career in film. He decided to stay, however, when he realized that sometimes the scripts the Coronation Street writing team — there are 14 of them — came up with were as good as any in film or theatre.
“I will continue for as long as I am able and as long as they want me,” he says. “And I intend living for a long time. I’d like to be the first centenarian to be working in a soap.”
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As life changes, the street changes. You’ll always hear older people saying things like ‘I don’t like the street anymore, it’s not what it was.’ That’s good.