10,000 episodes over six decades – and Ken is still king of the Street
HE’S had feuds, tragedies, four marriages, a string of affairs – and been a fixture for nearly 60 years on prime-time TV.
And Ken Barlow is still at the centre of events on Coronation Street, which tonight celebrates its 10,000th episode. Barlow, played by William Roache, 87, was in the soap’s first episode in December 1960, making him the sole survivor and the world’s longestserving TV soap star.
Tonight’s hour-long episode – airing at 8pm on Virgin Media One and 7.30pm on UTV – will see Barlow and his latest flame Claudia Colby, played by Rula Lenska, join other Street residents on a trip to Blackpool to help Rita (Barbara Knox) scatter the ashes of her estranged husband Dennis.
Speaking about the show’s milestone, Roache, who won the British Soap Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, said: ‘10,000 episodes – who would have believed that? Nobody, when it started.
‘If they’d offered me a 60year contract back then, I probably would have run a mile.’ Barlow was a student when Roache, then 28, began playing him. The character has been married four times – to Valerie Tatlock, Janet Reid and twice to Deirdre Hunt.
One of his biggest storylines, Deirdre’s affair with his enemy Mike Baldwin, drew an incredible 20million viewers in the UK.
Iain MacLeod, producer of the soap, said: ‘10,000 episodes! Not bad for a programme which one newspaper said in 1960 was “doomed from the outset”.’
Storyline drew 20 million viewers