The fragile star behind Mrs Merton
Caroline Aherne 1963-2016
Aged 13, Caroline Aherne saw Abigail’s Party on the television in her parents’ council flat in Manchester; transfixed, she resolved to become a writer. Years later, she would co-create two of the most successful TV series of the 1990s – the spoof chat show The Mrs Merton Show, and the semiautobiographical sitcom The Royle Family. Set in the front room of a working-class house in Manchester, the latter drew on Mike Leigh’s films, said The Times – but had the compassion of Alan Bennett. It invited the audience to laugh at its characters – including the vain, manipulative Denise, played by Aherne herself – but was made with real affection for them.
The daughter of Irish immigrants, Caroline Aherne was born in west London to Bert, a labourer, and Maureen, a school dinner lady. When she was two, the family moved to Wythenshawe, Manchester. Both she and her older brother, Patrick, were born with cancer of the retina: he lost an eye, she had very little sight in one of hers. A precociously bright child, she excelled at school, but at home was a great joker and a brilliant mimic – and after studying drama at Liverpool Polytechnic, she joined the Manchester comedy circuit. There she met Craig Cash, who became her best friend and collaborator. Aherne made her name on The Fast Show (playing, among other characters, the weather girl from an indeterminate southern European country whose only line is “Scorchio!”), and later as Mrs Merton – the chintz-wearing pensioner chat-show hostess who skewered her guests with faux naive questions. “What first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels,” she famously asked of Debbie Mcgee (who was, this week, one of the first to pay tribute to Aherne’s comic genius). “If you hadn’t done all that running around playing football, do you think you would have been as thirsty,” she enquired of George Best, while to Russell Grant she mused: “You’re an Aquarius, which means you’re ruled by Uranus. Do you think they’ll ever find a man on Uranus?”
The Mrs Merton Show ran for three years from 1995, and made her a star. But behind the scenes, all was not well: Aherne’s father (the inspiration for Jim Royle) had died; and her husband, New Order musician Peter Hook, had left her. Her drinking began to run out of control. Then in 1998, following the break-up of another relationship, she nearly killed herself by downing three bottles of champagne and taking an overdose of paracetamol. The first of several spells in the Priory followed. The Royle Family began in 1998; then, in 2001, Aherne announced she was retiring, because she no longer wanted to be famous, and moved to Australia. She returned to the UK in 2005, and though she carried on working (she narrated Channel 4’s Gogglebox – which owed a clear debt to The Royle Family) she kept out of the spotlight; having sold her house in London’s Notting Hill, where she’d never felt comfortable, she moved back to Manchester, to be close to her mother. In 2014, she made a rare public appearance at an event for Macmillan Cancer Support, where she revealed she’d been suffering from bladder and lung cancer.