TV On The Radio #11: Coronation Street (Part 2)

Last week, we looked at songs that mentioned Corrie. But what about the characters in Corrie? Some of them have been around so long, or made such an impact on popular culture, that they too have been immortalised in song. Let's start with Weatherfield's longest serving resident, the only one who's been there from the very start...

Ken Barlow

At 91 years of age, William Roache is in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-serving television star in a continuous role. Which just goes to prove that charisma is not a prerequisite for TV success. Here's Harry Hill's reverential tribute...

My name is Ken
And I will see you on Monday, Thursday and Friday
Mountains may crumble,
Rivers may run dry,
But I will always be here 
For I am your friend - Ken!

Ray Langton - saw him off
Len Fairclough - never stood a chance
Mike Baldwin - ha ha, Poor Mike.

Elsie Tanner, Hilda Ogden, Ena Sharples - all gone
Yet I remain...

Harry Hill - Ken!

Football fans will know that Ken Barlow has also been immortalised in a terrace anthem by the supporters of Stoke City...

Stoke City Fans - Viva Ken Barlow

But the last word on Ken has to go to Nigel Blackwell, who always fancied himself as the frontman of American indie band Sebadoh... sadly, it was not to be.

I could have been like Lou Barlow
But I’m more like Ken Barlow

Half Man Half Biscuit - Lark Descending

Deirdre Barlow

From Ken, we obviously have to go to his long-suffering spouse, Deirdre. Ken and Deirdre got married twice - firstly in 1981, a day or so before Prince Charles married Princess Di. More people watched the fictional marriage. Their second marriage, in 2005, happened the day before Charles married Camilla. Again, more people watched Ken & Deirdre.

The biggest upset in the Ken and Deirdre's marriage was when Deirdre had an affair with rag trade J.R. Mike Baldwin. The Toy Dolls are still recovering from the trauma...

The Toy Dolls - Deirdre's A Slag

The Band Name Of The Week award goes to Bleeding Heart Pigeons. They're from Ireland and appear to be named after Luzon, an actual breed of pigeon that has a big red patch on its chest, also known as a "stabbed pigeon". 

I can almost smell the burning
It's all overloading
The plot goes in circles and the 
Characters are possessed
Deirdre throws a trifle across the room
Richard drives in a river screaming 'I love you'
Small trifles coalesce 
Into one big mess
And it's fucked up

Bleeding Heart Pigeons - Weddings & Wakes

Thirsty work this, so let's stop off at The Rover's Return...

The Korgis - Rover's Return

If that was on the jukebox in the Rover's, you'd probably go and drink in the Flying Horse or The Kabin. But Waite, there's more!

John Waite - Rover's Return

And let's not forget this...

Pat Phoenix - The Rover's Chorus

Pat Phoenix was, of course, one of the show's iconic Grand Dames...

Elsie Tanner

So iconic that Elton John placed her at the end of a very distinguished list...

Marlene Dietrich
Marilyn Monroe
Brigitte Bardot
Doris Day
Billie Jean
Samantha Fox
Joan Collins
Kiki Dee
Katharine Hepburn
Vivian Leigh
Grace Jones
Priscilla Presley
Vanessa Williams
Dusty Springfield
Nancy Reagan
Rita Hayworth
Petula Clark
Julie Andrews
Superwoman
Annie Lennox
Mata Hari
Anouska Hempel
Shirley Temple
Tallulah Bankhead
Linda Lovelace
Little Eva
Natassia Kinski
Princess Caroline of Monaco
Miss Pat Verness
Elsie Tanner

Elton John (featuring George Michael) - Wrap Her Up

Elsie also gets a mention in another Toy Dolls song, though this one is more about Kevin Webster's chequered love life...

The Toy Dolls - Molly Was Immortal

Meanwhile, Elsie gets paired with William Shatner in this lost "post punk diamond"...

Get home Monday
Dinner on the train
What shall we watch tonight?
Captain Kirk, or
Elsie Tanner
It is always a fight

Sandglow Marinas - Power Of TV

Still in the Rover's Return... who's that I see behind the bar?

Bet Lynch

It was actually Bet Lynch who inspired me to feature Coronation Street on this blog. Not because of this...

Bet Lynch - These Boots Are Made For Walking

And not because of this...

Bet Lynch's Legs - Some Like It Hot

(While we're on the subject, Bet's not the only Corrie character to have a band named after her...

The Mavis Riley Experience - The North Wales Emotional Suicide Blues)

No, the reason I decided to investigate songs about Corrie was because of this, from the much underrated Rodney Allen...

Sunday papers with diversity
Shock horror bingo and Dynasty
Missing truth and making a mess
Bet Lynch has got a flat in Hammersmith

Rodney Allen - Happy Sad

It's also worth remembering that Bet Lynch was a big influence on this video...

Still in the Rover's, who's that pulling a judgmental face at the way Bet's dressed this morning?

John Shuttleworth - Betty Turpin

And who's that cleaning up over in the corner? Only my favourite Corrie character...

Hilda Ogden

Honestly, Hilda deserved better than this... 

Snuff - Hilda Ogden And The Thick Plottens

Particularly as she was such a talented singer herself...

Hilda Singing

It always made me laugh when you heard Jean Alexander talk in real life, how posh she was. 

Now... which Coronation Street character do you think I found mentioned in more songs than anyone else... if it's not one of the big names above? Rita? Gail? Jack and Vera Duckworth? Sadly, I couldn't find anything for any of them. No, the true Queen of Corrie (according to the TV On The Radio Jukebox, anyway) is...

Ena Sharples

Look, life is very intricate, when you're in the crowd

Life becomes the movies

And everyone has a role

It's easy being the actor

When the combine's the only star 

Sunday papers

And the dailies

Ena Sharples

Page 3 girls

News at ten

War in Rhodesia

Far away

In a distant land

But we're alright

We're nice and warm here

No one to hurt us

Except ourselves

The Jam - The Combine

Why did Paul Weller stop writing lyrics like those?

Here's a band that do still write lyrics like that... with a lot more swearing.

Everyone still looks like Ena Sharples and Ray Reardon

People need to move on

That '50s look can do one

Elvis has definitely left the fucking building

The Sleaford Mods - TCR

Jeymes Samuel is Seal's younger brother. He makes music under the moniker Bullitts. He was born in 1979, one year before Ena Sharples left Coronation Street for good. So he must have been watching the show at a very young age...

I'm a weirdo,

You're a weirdo too my love,

So don't kill all the fun.

I was playing. You were playing too my love,

Until you pulled out that gun,

And shot that photograph

With Ena Sharples' autograph,

I only tried to have a laugh with you...

The Bullitts - Weirdo

Even younger that The Bullitts though is Connecticut "Indie Rapper" Armando Acevedo II, aka Sketch Tha Cataclysm. The mind boggles as to where he came across the name Ena Sharples, although he does pronounce her first name "Enna", which makes me think he's just done a google search for words that rhyme with metacarpals.

Man, I'm ripping that mic like Ena Sharples 

Once it touches metacarpals

Sketch Tha Cataclysm - Place To Be

Our final Ena mention comes from Richard Jobson and Stuart Adamson in a glorious punky list song that celebrates a number of Corrie (and Crossroads) stars, including Annie Walker and Stan Ogden, while Hilda, Bet and Eddie Yates get a mention on the Peel Sessions version. But the chorus belong to one man and one man only...

Albert Tatlock

So the last word goes to Albert... but being the sole focus of a chorus by The Skids is not this Corrie character's greatest claim to pop immortality. Oh no! Because actor Jack Haworth, who played Albert for almost a quarter of a century, was also responsible for the spoken word introduction on this...

Snapshots #270: A Top Ten Suburban Songs

Here's what the internet suggested when I typed "suburban camera" into my search engine.

Slow down. Here are this week's suburban answers...

10. The Offspring?

The Descendents - Suburban Home

Who doesn't want to be stereotyped?

9. Zealots.

The Fanatics - Suburban Love Songs

The Fanatics were Simon Fowler's band prior to Ocean Colour Scene.

8. Sulphuric Children.

The chemical symbol for sulphur is S. So these are the S-Kids.

The Skids - Sweet Suburbia

7. Euphemistic initialism used to express frustration.

FFS!

That's an amalgamation of Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, in case you were unaware.

 FFS - Little Guy From The Suburbs

6. US Quiz Rota found to be all messed up

"US Quiz Rota" was an angram.

Suzi Quatro - Official Suburban Superman

5. Wogan’s entrance room.

That would be a Terry Hall.

Terry Hall - Suburban Cemetery

4. Bassett, between two blokes.

Fred Bassett. Remember him?

Manfred Mann - Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. James

3. Prisoner remembers the good times inside.

Prisoner reMEMBERS the good times inside.

The Members - The Sound of the Suburbs

2. Where you can buy a Geordie term of endearment, lads.

In the "pet" shop, boys.

Pet Shop Boys - Suburbia

1. What Spider-Man’s Uncle does with his sheets. 

Uncle Ben always folds his sheets. With great bed linen comes great responsibility.

More next Saturday.

Neverending Top Ten #5.7: Homework

This is one of those stories that takes a bit of explaining, but it has the perfect punchline. Or it proves my point. Always nice when that happens.

Sam’s homework has become a bone of contention over the last year or so. Not with Sam, but with school. The homework they provide is all online – either playing a times tables game called TT Rockstars… or an equivalent spelling game called Spelling Shed. As parents, we’re really conscious of restricting the amount of screen time Sam has as there’s plenty of evidence that too much can affect attention span, mood and academic achievement (among about a thousand other things). Call us old fashioned, but we’d prefer Sam to be given paper-based homework as the online programmes prove ultra-addictive, and encourage an unpleasant competitiveness among classmates and classes… something Sam’s school seem to encourage by offering prizes to the students who have been online the most. One of these prizes last year was to gorge yourself on a chocolate fountain… you couldn’t make this up.

Last year, Sam would often come away from playing these games red-faced and furious; it just wasn’t good for his health. We reached the point where he was getting so wound up that I rang the head teacher and told her we were banning the games. There was much more to the conversation than that, but I’ll spare you the details.

When the new school year kicked off in September, so did the pressure to play these bloody homework games again. We decided to give Sam another chance, but we told school we were monitoring it and if it looked like the homework was becoming too competitive again, that’d be the end of it. Sam’s actually been dealing with it much better this year, doing short bursts of activity on the games and not getting too stressed out… until last week, when suddenly we found him clamouring to go back on the Spelling Shed game more and more. We asked him what had changed and he explained that every week in assembly, they congratulated the class that had got the top score, and every week for the whole term, one class had won it. (Never mind that this was a class in the year above.) Sam and his friends were determined to beat that class, just once, so they’d committed to increasing their game play until they won. “Just one time,” he said, “that’s all.”

By the time we realised what was going on, Sam and his class were actually ahead, so it looked like they’d succeed in their quest and hopefully everything would go back to normal.

And then, at the last minute, the other class won again.

And that was when all hell broke loose. Let’s call it Shed-Gate. Because it seemed that a boy in the year above, let’s call him Edgar Teabag (because that’s his name… well, it' s not, but it could be) had been caught cheating. He’d not been playing the game at all… but he’d worked out how to hack it and give himself (and therefore his whole class) the highest score every week.

M’lud… the prosecution rests.

 

Completely unrelated: this is a track Sam’s been singing along to since I added it to our latest in-car CD.

Bram Tchaikovsky, aka Peter Bramall, was the lead singer of 70's Airport-botherers The Motors. When that band flew off in separate directions, Bram formed his own group of power-poppers, releasing three albums before going off to find an honest job. (He also played guitar on Into The Valley by The Skids, if you’re keeping score.) Sarah Smiles reached #32 in The Netherlands Top 40 in 1979. Listening to it now, I can’t believe it wasn’t Top Ten everywhere…

Saturday Snapshots #35 - The Answers

Times Like These, we all need a little something to take our mind off the worries of the world. Hopefully Saturday Snapshots does that without throwing a Monkey Wrench into your weekend.

Thanks for playing as always - I think Rigid Digit just managed to steal the win from Lynchie this week, although Lynchie did try for an extra point for identifying Janet Jackson... but that was hardly difficult, was it? I'll give you half a point for cheek, Lynchie - but RD still takes it. Well done to Charity Chic for being first out of bed, though he guessed the wrong Jackson Browne song and nobody corrected him (my fault for not saying he was wrong, but I was busy yesterday watching the Solo movie... which is the first Star Wars film since the original trilogy that I'd happily watch again). Special thanks to Alyson for swooping in at the end of the day and cleaning up the one nobody got... which I'm sure Martin would have got if he hadn't been off doing something more interesting.

Anyway - the answers...


10. A stone rook, doomed to share Mick's nervous breakdown.

In chess, a stone rook would be a Hard Castle.

Mick Jagger (and the Stones) had a 19th Nervous Breakdown.

Paul Hardcastle - 19

9. After an extensive dose of peroxide, they start fooling around on the back row.

Extensive = Long, Peroxide makes you Blonde.

The Long Blondes - Lust In The Movies

8. Nudies equal Craig David's record.

Craig David's biggest hit was Seven Days, which equals one week.

Nudies are what we used to call naked ladies when I was a kid. (Such innocent times.)

Barenaked Ladies - One Week

7. Winners share a hangover at sunrise.

Winners are champions.

Too much Tequila Sunrise will give you a hangover.

The Champs - Tequila

6. Signing on behalf of the Terminator, wins the sword fight immediately.

If you sign on someone else's behalf, you write P.P.

Arnold Schwarzengger was the Terminator.

PP Arnold - The First Cut Is The Deepest

5. Pretending to be happy together in the garden, yeah?

The Turtles sang Happy Together - if they were pretending, they'd be Mock Turtles.

The Mock Turtles - Can You Dig It?

4. Stole Bruce's Cadillac: who cares!?

Bruce's Cadillac was Pink. So what?

Pink - So What!?

3. Time flies... backwards?

Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

The Byrds - My Back Pages

(Although I did like the other suggestions - it seems quite a few Byrds songs would have fit that clue!)

2. Slipping downhill.

Too easy.

The Skids - Into The Valley

1. Johnny & June give James an E when he misses his flight.

Johnny and June went to Jackson.

James Brown + an E =

All My Life I've been waiting for Saturday Snapshots. More next week.