"They'd constantly get knocked back by men and pick themselves up again. When you were finding your feet on the gay scene, having one-night stands and being rejected, you could relate to their survival instinct."Yet the soap has always washed its hands of life's realities. And its cast of bossy Northern women soon attracted a devoted gay following."For a lot of gay men, characters like Elsie Tanner and Bet Gilroy were role models," says the comedian Paul O'Grady, the artist formerly known as Lily Savage. So one day he clambered to the top of a filing cabinet in his boss's office and refused to come down until he was allowed to write about a subject closer to his heart. Out of that heroic fit of petulance, Coronation Street was born. My grandmother, for instance, was the basis for Ena Sharples..."As a young scriptwriter at Granada in 1960, Warren was seconded to the adventure series Biggles, which he loathed.
"Because I was confused about my sexuality, because I wanted to know what I was, I used to watch very closely what made men tick and what made women tick. Out of those very detailed observations, which I'd been making since I was five or six, came the original Coronation Street characters. Which is ironic, as the credits still tell us that Coronation Street is based on "an idea by Tony Warren". And Warren is a man so deliciously camp that he likes to inform folk there has never been a closet big enough to hide him.Moreover, he once told me that Corrie could only have been created by a gay man.
Gail attracts tragedy like alcohol attract alcoholics.All of which is a diversion from the main event: Coronation Street's first gay kiss. It has taken 43 years for the venerable soap to acknowledge the passion that might beat in the breast of one man for another. Murder, rape, fraud, bigamy, adultery, miscarriage and fatal traffic accidents have long been deployed to drive the plot forward; so have wrongful convictions, burst watermains, kidney transplants, incontinent animals and rigged meat-pie competitions.But homosexuality has never reared its awkward head. Still, once she finds out that Todd prefers her brother, Sarah might at least seek consolation in the arms of her mother Gail, from whom she is currently estranged, and who has herself been decidedly unlucky in love, the most recent of her three husbands having turned out to be a serial killer. As most Independent readers will surely be aware, Sarah is Nick's sister, which complicates matters terribly. Yesterday's report that psychotherapy can make heterosexuals of gays and lesbians troubled by their sexuality, will perhaps be of interest to Todd in Coronation Street, who on Sunday night planted a gentle kiss on the lips of a drowsy Nick Tilsley only to find, to his considerable mortification, that he had been reading the signals all wrong, and that Nick is as straight as one of the "arrers" in the Rovers Return. In last night's episode, Nick tried to persuade Todd to come clean about his sexuality to his girlfriend Sarah. The chairgod thought that this might be a good time to adjourn for an ambrosia break and get some fresh air.More of this soon, I hope More from Miles Kington.
He just didn't like the tone of voice used by the Christian god when he used the word "pagan".22. A Stone Age god of winter requested the Christian god not to make free with the "pagan" so much, thank you.20. The Christian god said he was sorry but he thought pagan deities were happy to be called "pagan".21 The god of winter said he was. It was, of course, simply an adaptation of a previously existing and very successful pagan winter feast.19. The chairgod said he thought people would be glad if he went out.