HILDA’S FAREWELL

Coronation Street lost one of its most iconic characters, no-nonsense cleaning lady Hilda Ogden, on Christmas Day 1987. Hilda – whose husband Stan had died three years earlier – hung up her headscarf and curlers and packed away the flying ducks off the wall, bidding farewell to the street after 23 years in an emotional send-off at The Rovers, where she sang a wartime anthem with her friends before bowing out of Weatherfield forever. Fans had started a “Save Hilda” campaign to stop her being written out of the show before they realised it was actress Jean Alexander’s own decision to leave.

There were 83 complaints received by ITV after Ken Barlow uttered the show’s first expletive, “bloody”, in 1961.