Coronation Street: Piss Off!

Note how The Sun is now against the - but also note the inverted commas - 'homophobes'.

Und! Mail Online.

Tony Warren: 1936-2015

 'Only a gay man could have created Coronation Street.'

Goodbye, my friend.

Many fitting and fulsome tributes have appeared.

Note how pretty much all of them said being gay was central to his - and therefore Coronation Street's - story.

PS Once got Tony to sign my copy of The Smiths' Shakespeare's Sister - cover star Pat Phoenix - but I'm buggered if I know where that's got to.

Coronation Street: Weatherfield's Disgrace

Coronation Street star Antony Cotton has spoken about the abuse he faces over his camp soap character - from young gay men.

Speaking at Manchester Pride's fringe festival on the subject of gay characters in Coronation Street, he says he's faced stick for years from the gay community - about his soap character, knicker-stitcher Sean Tully.

He told a packed audience at The Lowry centre: "I get a lot of stick from people who say, and these are people who are 21 years old, 'you've put the gay cause back 21 years.'

"Or they say 'you're a disgrace to this village'. You'd be surprised how many kids say that to me."

In defence of his soap character, Antony said: "Sean has never had to explain who he was, he never had to come out, he was just accepted into the community of Weatherfield from the start.

"So for every one of those people who say to me that Sean's a stereotype, and that he doesn't have a political storyline, actually the fact he's never had to explain himself makes him the most political gay character in soap." ...

Daily Mirror -

FAGBURN SAYS: DEATH TO THE BED
WETTING PEARL-CLUTCHING ANTI-CAMP HETERONORMATIVE GAYBORES!!!

PS The Mirror explain 'This article originally appeared on the Manchester Evening News website'.

It was then cut-and-pasted and run in The Independent without acknowledgement by someone called Jenn Selby.
Fagburn would consider this worthy of a printed apology, and it's also surely a disciplinary offence.
But it's The Independent, so don't hold you breath.
Journalism!

Coronation Street creator, the wonderful Tony Warren (above right), was also on the panel.

He recalled some hoo-ha at Granada Stuidios back in the 60s.

"I remember sitting in a script meeting and hearing these men describe one actor as a poof, a storyline described as poofy, I just said to them: 'Without a poof none of you would be in work this morning'."

Update: Antony was wearing a Pansy Project t-shirt on tonight's Corrie! Via Emma.

Coronation Street: "Gay Fish And Chips"

ITV continues to milk mark Coronation Street's golden jubilee with The Corrie Years.
Here's the official spiel;
"New three part series, The Corrie Years, focuses on 50 years of storylines which have been national talking points throughout its history. It touches on the plots and characters that have made headlines and courted controversy, broken new ground in television drama, challenged taboos and reflected the seismic changes in society which have occurred since the very beginning of the soap in 1960."
Got that?
How ironic then that this is being broadcast in the eye of a media-invented shitstorm about whether "Corrie is now far too gay".
But does anyone actually care?
Tabloids have been dredging up old Street stars presumably hoping they'd be outraged.
Johnny Briggs/Mike Baldwin was quoted as saying;
“I haven’t watched it recently so I don’t know about the new gay characters, but my philosophy is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."
Oh.
The Sun managed to dig up Ken Morley/Reg Holdsworth who they quote as saying;
"The Street has gone too far with gay problems, gay shoes, gay fish and chips. They need to get back to square one and deal with people's everyday problems in a humorous way."
Though as this quote is in The Sun it may well be completely made up.
Ken's recipe for saving the Street?
Go on and guess.
"They need characters like Reg again. A Holdsworth in the Rovers Return would get people tuning in.
"There is nothing he couldn't do - a character like that could save Corrie single-handedly by ranting about real issues in the Rovers."
Way back in May Jean Alexander/Hilda Ogden said:
"Every community has people who are gay and they are very nice people.
"I'm not running the Street down - and let's not forget its creator Tony Warren is gay - but three couples seems excessive."
But again, this was a quote in a now defunct newspaper called the News Of The World, so I doubt she actually "said" it.
Fagburn has been away for the last week - which means I also missed;
'Coronation Street uproar among cast and fans as ratings slump' - Daily Mirror.
Though apparently viewers are leaving "in droves", not because the plotlines are too racy, but because they're just too dreary.
Even so, producer Phil Collinson still had to defend the gay stuff.
Appearing on ITV's This Morning he matter-of-factly said; “There is no gay agenda. We’re just telling stories about love. Audiences want that.”
The Mirror asked its readers and gave us 'Your verdict on why things are wrong on the street'.
In fine; the stories are boring/unbelievable and it's on so many nights a week now quality has clearly been sacrificed for quantity.
But what about all Teh Gays?!!
George Horncastle wrote; "I am gay, but there are too many gay characters in such a small street, and I believe it comes across more as a crusade."
How fascinating!
Collinson vowed to cut crime storylines - and admitted doing 250 shows a year may be stetching things, just a tad.
In a shameless piece of mountain out of molehill-making, the Mail - who began this fantasy that "Corrie is too gay" - managed to spin this out into;
"Collinson, who is openly gay, also defended himself following accusations that there has been an influx of homosexual activity on the show.
"In April, it was reported that current and ex-members of the cast were concerned by the number of gay plotlines introduced.
"And earlier this month, poor ratings were blamed on the increase of same-sex couples.
"But Collinson, 40, told OK!: 'I haven't introduced any gay characters.'"
D'Oh!

Brian Sewell Vs Coronation Street: How Terribly Vulgar

Well-known expert on working class Northern life, Brian Sewell, wades into the debate about all The Gays on our TV soaps before the watershed a-kissing and a-cuddling, asking;
'What Have They Done To CORRIE?'
In The Daily Mail, natch.
"Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the age range? Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North?
"Coronation Street has a gay scriptwriter, Damon Rochefort. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, its very first writer, its inventor in 1959, Tony Warren, was gay and open about it when homosexuality was still illegal and the penalties dire — and had a tough time with homophobia.
"But the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and where once we had no gaiety at all, we now, perhaps, have rather too much..."
Blah blah blah!
"As a result, TV is far too politically correct..."
Blah blah blah!
Mad conclusion coming up!
"If the audience responds to the proselytising and is happy for the street to swarm with gloomy lesbians and happy homosexuals engaged in relationships ranging from intensely monogamous to brief, shallow and promiscuous, then it must be broadcast after the watershed. ITV must make up its mind."
Did this commission for the Mail come over lunch with Paul Dacre?
How very stupid of Mr Sewell to enter into this debate in the pages of the Mail.
You silly old queen.

• You can watch Brian Sewell's filth-filled 2007 Channel 4 TV documentary, Dirty Dali here. How lucky for us Dali forever preserved young Mr Sewell wanking on film.

Update: On Thursday The Daily Star ran with a straight lift of this story titled 'Corrie Is Now Far Too Gay'.
They even trailed it on the front page - and guess what they illustrated that with?
A photo of two goodlooking young lesbians from Corrie snogging.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

Coronation Street: The Outsider

Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, gives a rare interview with Radio Times to mark the soap's golden jubilee.
Of course magazines are always boasting they have "a rare interview" with someone, but Mr Warren is admirably self-publicity-shy and this one really is.
It's been picked up elsewhere mainly by Tony talking about how Corrie's success led to his own battle with the booze and a lost decade or more, which is well-known.
"Once I went to Amsterdam to get away from it, put on the television and there was Ena Sharples with Dutch subtitles. I put my foot through the screen. After Coronation Street, what do you do for an encore? I had a drink while I thought about it, and one turned into a million."
More interesting for Fagburn is the feeling that only a gay man could have created Coronation Street.
"I was the outsider – but, you see, the outsider sees more, the outsider hears more, the outsider has to do that to survive. And that's what qualified me to write Coronation Street."
But Warren says it was a battle from day one; "In those days, if you were going to work in television and you were gay, you had to be three times as good as anyone else," he says, fire in his voice. "The first Coronation Street writing team contained some of the biggest homophobes I've ever met. I remember getting to my feet in a story conference and saying: 'Gentlemen, I have sat here for two-and-a-half hours and listened to three poof jokes, a storyline dismissed as poofy and an actor described as 'useless for us as he's a poof'. As a matter of fact, he isn't. But I would point out that I am one, and without a poof none of you would be in work today.'"
The struggle continued. In spite of Warren's influence, Weatherfield didn't get its first gay resident until Todd Grimshaw appeared in in 2003; "I campaigned for years and years with subsequent producers to no avail. But I never theorise – I thought that it would all work itself out."