...and why are your cyber trolls trying to get Corrie’s Maureen Lipman sacked?
How very timely that vile Corbyn - hater Maureen Lipman gets a role on a major working class TV show. Propaganda in action. Boycott her. #maureenlipman #itv #CoronationStreet Gutted that Maureen Lipman is coming into Coronation Street. The woman is an ant
IT IS a plot to stretch credulity even by soap opera standards. Left-wing activists are demanding the removal of Maureen Lipman from Coronation Street after she criticised Jeremy Corbyn.
Lipman, who attended an antiSemitism rally outside Labour’s London headquarters in April and condemned the party’s failure to address the issue, has been the victim of a hostile Twitter campaign since her return to the Weatherfield cobbles as battleaxe Evelyn Plummer.
One message posted last week by Lynn Braben, who describes herself a ‘JC supporter’, read: ‘Maureen Lipman shouldn’t be allowed to be in Corrie…
‘The right to be political isn’t the issue; but she is alienating viewers who support Mr Corbyn by basically calling them Holocaust supporters.’
Another, from a woman called Kate, said: ‘Feel like the producers didn’t realise Maureen Lipman is utterly detestable…. Get rid. Next. Bye. Adios.’
And a post by a person calling themselves Herr Chop said: ‘How very timely that vile Corbyn-hater Maureen Lipman gets a role on a major working class TV show. Propaganda in action. Boycott her.’
Lipman, who is Jewish, had been a lifelong Labour supporter until growing concerned about its shift to the Left, first under Ed Miliband and then under Mr Corbyn.
At the rally in April, the 72-yearold said: ‘ Everything you have heard today points to the fact that we have an anti-Semite at the head of the British Labour Party.’
Her Coronation Street character is very much in the mould of fierce Weatherfield women such as Ena Sharples and Hilda Ogden – something that trolls have been quick to exploit.
‘They say some soap actors are playing themselves,’ wrote one called Socioblah.
Lipman, whose late husband, Jack Rosenthal, wrote 129 episodes of Coronation Street, is one of Britain’s most cherished actresses.
She first gained prominence in the 1979 sitcom Agony and achieved further fame as Jewish grandmother Beattie Bellman in a series of popular BT adverts.
Other fans of Coronation Street have praised her portrayal of feisty Plummer. One tweeted: ‘Maureen Lipman has some cracking one-liners… New fave character already.’ Other viewers have described her performance as ‘perfection’ and ‘hilarious’.
ITV bosses are said to be delighted with the public’ s response to her character and are planning a number of major storylines for her. It is the actress’s second appearance in the long-running soap – in 2002, she played Lillian Spencer, who temporarily took over running the famous Rovers Return.
Responding last night to the negative tweets, Lipman suggested that her critics might have much in common with Evelyn Plummer. ‘Evelyn is a monster but she doesn’t think so,’ she said.
‘Like the hardliners and the No Platformers, she is convinced that she is 100 per cent right and anyone who doesn’t 100 per cent agree should be banned or boycotted. It’s dangerous thinking.’