Comedy festival is a Royle event
COMIC Caroline Aherne’s career will be celebrated in the BBC’s Festival Of Funny this spring.
Caroline, who died five years ago aged 52, will feature in a show hosted by her
Fast Show colleague John Thomson. Clips from her work including The Mrs Merton Show and The Royle Family will be remembered. A similar celebration of Tommy Cooper’s work will be hosted by Sir Lenny Henry.
Also featuring in the festival are Dave Allen On Life, a two-part series Billy Connolly Made In Scotland and Victoria Wood’s Victoria At The Albert, filmed in 2001.
Meanwhile, new and upcoming talent will also be showcased.
The BBC’s Shane Allen said: “Comedians have been starved of stages and live audiences; it’s important that we continue to back the stars of today and tomorrow as well as honour beloved legends.”
CORRIE stars filmed scenes while tipsy during the soap’s heyday, it has been claimed.
In the 1990s cast members regularly enjoyed boozy breaks at a staff bar near to the set.
Author Melanie Blake was working as an extra on the show at the time and witnessed Street regulars drinking and then returning to film scenes.
She said: “You could get into the bar if you knew someone. Lynne Perrie, who played Ivy Tilsley, used to take me there and we’d get leathered together. She was wild.
“She’d be dancing on the tables. Then she’d be rowing with Liz Dawn who played Vera. They were always at each other’s throats.
“A lot of the cast would get a bit merry. And a couple of them would go there in their lunch hour and then rock up to the set drunk.”
The antics at the bar were more outrageous than anything seen on screen. Melanie said: “It was the place to go. All the secret stuff went on there. It was crazy.
“They all got to be normal in there, so they really lived it up.
“People were drinking shots and getting off with people. And some of them would sneak off for a bunk up. There were flings that fans still don’t know about.”
She added: “It felt like a real-life Rovers Return.”
Melanie’s experiences inspired her book Ruthless Women.
The novel lifts the lid on the backstabbing, bitching and sex that she claims goes on behind the scenes on TV’s biggest shows.
Ruthless Women, published by Head of Zeus, is out now priced £12.99.
CHEERS: Old Corrie line-up