Doreen Keogh
Actress who became the first barmaid at the Rovers Return
DOREEN KEOGH, the actress, who has died aged 91, was the original Coronation Street barmaid.
Her character, Concepta Riley, an excitable Irishwoman, began pulling pints at the Rovers Return in the fifth episode of the soap opera and stayed with the series for four years. In 1961 she married the widowed bus conductor Harry Hewitt (Ivan Beavis). They had a son, Christopher.
When, in October 1962, the baby was kidnapped outside Gamma Garments, it gave Coronation Street its most dramatic storyline to date and a record 21 million viewers. The saga of the ensuing police hunt ran for two weeks until Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix) discovered Christopher alive and well in the care of Joan Akers (Anna Cropper).
Two years later, however, Harry and Concepta were written out by an axewielding new producer. The couple returned briefly in 1967 for Elsie Tanner’s second wedding, only for Harry to be crushed to death after the reception, when bricks used to jack up Len Fairclough’s (Peter Adamson’s) broken-down old van gave way as he was trying to repair it.
Concepta returned to visit Annie Walker (Doris Speed), landlady of the Rovers Return, in 1972 and announced that she was to marry Sean Regan (Tony Doyle), whom she had met when he answered her advertisement for a foreman at the family garage, which she was struggling to manage on her own.
In 1975, she and her husband were visiting Weatherfield when Regan made a pass at Bet Lynch (Julie Goodyear). Concepta told Annie Walker that she knew Sean had cheated on her before. This was her last visit to Weatherfield.
Doreen Keogh was born in Dublin on February 5 1926 and left school aged 15 to train with the Abbey Theatre School, before her father’s job took the family to London in the war.
As well as Coronation Street, she appeared in numerous television series, including Ballykissangel (as Imelda Egan), Z Cars and Crossroads, and in the late 1990s had recurring roles as Pete Gifford’s dope-smoking mother Audrey in Cold Feet and as Mary Carroll, the Royles’ gossipy, orangehaired Irish neighbour in the Granada Television comedy The Royle Family. She also played the character Mrs Dineen in two episodes of Father Ted.
In Ireland she was a cast member of the soap opera Fair City from 1989 until the early 1990s. Her stage credits, for various companies, include Shadow of a Gunman, Ducking Out, Juno and the Paycock, Look Out Here Comes Trouble, Once a Catholic, Summer, Heartbreak House and Purple Dust.
On the big screen her roles included Mary in Two A Penny (1967), Emma in Darling Lili (1970), Beryl in Take It Or Leave It (1982), Mrs Truscott in To The Lighthouse (1983), Mrs Buckley in Widows’ Peak (1994), Nonie in Brylcreem Boys (1998), the Mother Superior in Some Mother’s Son (1996) and Miss Celestine in The Honeymooners (2005). The same year she played the shopkeeper in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto.
Although Irish-born, she was credited with coaching Barbra Streisand to speak with a cockney accent for the 1970 film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
A first marriage, to the actor Frank Singuineau, was dissolved. She is survived by her second husband, Jack Jenner. Despite her Coronation Street character giving birth on the show, she never became a mother in real life.
Doreen Keogh, born February 5 1926, died December 31 2017