Perfect gent – Corrie’s Deirdre gives verdict on her co-star Roache
Famous faces from soap line up to back sex trial actor
ONE by one, they filed into court. Between them they boasted well over a century of experience as actors and actresses in Britain’s bestknown and longest-running soap opera.
So yesterday, in a storyline even the scriptwriters might have struggled to imagine, a procession of faces made famous by Coronation Street came to the aid of Bill Roache to support him in what might be the toughest role of his life.
Each spoke as defence witnesses in the trial of the actor who has played Ken Barlow in the TV serial for 53 years. Now their co- star is facing charges of rape and indecent assault going back to the 1960s, when he was the ‘heart-throb’ figure in a show that made him a celebrity.
And thus, a crowded court became the unlikely setting for a key episode in
‘He was like a father figure’
the two-week trial – the first time anyone has been given the opportunity to testify in support of the 81-year- old actor. Chief among them yesterday was Anne Kirkbride, who has a 41-year association with Roache on Coronation Street and has played Ken Barlow’s wife for 19 of those years.
A husky voice that would be instantly familiar to any Coronation Street fan spilled from the witness box as she gave evidence at Preston Crown Court in answer to questions from Louise Blackwell QC, Roache’s barrister.
‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to get through this without asking how old you are,’ the QC said.
She was 59, we learned, and had joined the cast as Deirdre in 1972. Back then she was a ‘terrified and nervous’ 18-year- old, but quickly slotted in with the cast.
Ken Barlow and her on- screen character were ‘very close’, and she therefore got to know Roache well. They socialised on set, she said, but not outside work. The first time they met he was very friendly, she said. He offered her a cigarette and they ‘ had a really nice chat’. ‘ We shared a lot of the same interests, in spiritual things,’ she said.
Asked to choose one word to sum him up during those early days she thought for a moment and replied in a pronounced northern accent: ‘Lovely.’ How did he behave in her company? ‘Impeccably,’ the actress said. ‘Perfectly. He was always a perfect gentleman.’
As she left, she gave Roache a beaming smile in the dock and nod- ded to his family in the public gallery. Later Helen Worth, who joined the soap in 1974 as Gail Potter and ‘married’ four times, described Roache as a ‘like a father figure’.
In relation to women, she said: ‘He was caring, never anything more.’ And with young female cast members? ‘I never saw anything that was untoward whatsoever.’
Chris Gascoyne – who has played the Barlows’ son Peter for 13 years, said Roache was always ‘ com- pletely normal’ with young women in the cast and had ‘never’ displayed an unpleasant side.
At one stage the judge, Mr Justice Holroyde QC, reminded the jury that these were real people, not characters from the soap.
It was underlined by the fact that as Roache’s fictional family gave evidence, his real family watched.
One – his 48-year-old son Linus – had both credentials. When he was younger he had played Ken Barlow’s son, the court has heard
Roache, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, is accused of using his fame and popularity to exploit ‘ starstruck’ youngsters for sex in the mid to late 1960s. He denies two counts of rape and four counts of indecent assault involving five complainants aged 16 and under between 1965 and 1971. The trial continues.