CORONATION STREET WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO LAST 11 WEEKS
SIXTY YEARS AGO TODAY THE FAMOUS THEME TUNE PLAYED OUT FOR THE FIRST TIME. BILL ROACHE, WHO’S PLAYED KEN BARLOW FOR OVER 4,000 EPISODES, TELLS SUE CRAWFORD HOW CORRIE’S SUCCESS TOOK EVERYONE BY SURPRISE
THERE’S barely a day that goes by when veteran Bill Roache isn’t asked to pose for a selfie with a fan. Yet it still came as something of a surprise when none other than the Queen asked to have her picture taken with him, whipping out her own camera and asking Roache to pose alongside her.
‘We met in Preston on a visit in 2002. She came over and started chatting and she had her own private camera and she said, “Could I have a photograph?”’ Roache recalls. ‘She took a private photograph and I’ve still got a copy of it, it was very surreal! She’s lovely and so wonderful to talk to.
‘Various members of the royal family watch the show. Camilla told me that when she was young the phone was taken off the hook at 7.30pm so they could all watch Coronation Street. And I know that Princess Diana and the Queen Mother both loved it.’
Roache and Coronation Street celebrate their 60th anniversary today. After six decades the actor is recognised all over the world so it’s no surprise that the public often confuse him and Ken – including his own father.
‘The show had been running for two or three years and I was sitting with him watching an episode,’ Roache says. ‘The commercial break came up and he said, “Oh, just put the kettle on Ken… oh, sorry, Bill!” I thought, “If my own father can do it, anybody can!”
‘I treat it as a nickname and if someone calls me Ken, I’ll answer. I don’t say, “No, I’m not Ken, I’m Bill Roache!”’
As the only original cast member still on the cobbles, Bill has appeared in 4,632 episodes – yet he still suffers from nerves.
‘It’s not just a job, I still get very nervous,’ Roache says. ‘When I’ve got a big scene with some emotional speech I get really nervous beforehand. But I’m glad I do. It’s because I care about it. If I didn’t worry I’d be complacent.’
I was sitting with my dad and he said, ‘Put the kettle on Ken… oh, sorry, Bill!’
Roache – at 88 the oldest cast member – holds a Guinness World Record as the longest-serving TV soap star in the world, yet seems no closer now to retiring than when he was 65. ‘It keeps my brain active,’ he grins. ‘I’m having to learn all the time so it gives me a discipline.’
Roache lives in Cheshire with his children, Will, 34 and Verity, 39, from his marriage to second wife Sara, who died in 2009. He has two children from his first marriage – Vanya, who died in 2018, aged 50, and actor son Linus, 56. Roache joined Coronation Street aged 28.
‘It was only supposed to run for 11 weeks. It was a little stop-gap between some other shows so we thought it was a very limited thing,’ he says. ‘But the minute it went out, it zoomed straight to the top of the viewing charts because it was a time of the new realism sweeping through film and theatre.
‘I remember the producer saying, “What have we got here? What is this?” It took off pretty quickly, we were all taken by surprise.’ Roache only came close to quitting once.
‘I had a bit of a crisis in m my forties,’ he says, ‘but I re realised that as actors get old older, the work gets less and less, and with Coronation Str Street it doesn’t.’
O Over the decades, Ken ha has been through four we weddings, three wives, 28 gir girlfriends, several affairs an and a troubled family in including alcoholic son Peter and murderess daughter Tracy.
‘To begin with, Ken was a young guy with all the gir girlfriends and then when he moved into middle age th they tried to make him a bit nerdy. I didn’t like it so It I talked to the producer and th the big Ken/Mike/Deirdre tria triangle came. I could really let rip on that,’ he says. ‘K ‘Ken’s moved now into where I like him – being godfather to this dysfunctional family.’ Not bad for an 11-week gig.
ITV celebrates Coronation Street’s anniversary this week