"You've heard of the Bride of Frankenstein? Well I'm the husband of Vera Duckworth." - Jack Duckworth
"You haven't heard about the time she used real toads in Toad In The Hole? And poor Jack's never been the same since she did coq au vin..." - Kevin Webster
"I don't think our Jack would like you to do that, coz 'e's a bit possessive about parts of my body. But I don't know why, coz e' hasn't touched 'em for ages." - Vera Duckworth
"I live in a very funny area, me. I'm quite normal compared to most of them who live round our way." - Vera Duckworth
And so, farewell then, Liz Dawn, who brought the common-as-muck battleaxe Vera Duckworth to our screens. The capers and bickering of Vera and the hapless Jack were a staple of prime-time telly - as British as fish'n'chips, immediately recognisable as the type of people your mother wouldn't want you to mix with, but endearing nonetheless.
The demise of yet another of the genuinely entertaining character actors that made Coronation Street what it was - part-soap, part-black comedy, loved by millions - leaves all the more room for the current crop of writers to continue turning the show into a maudlin shadow of itself, populated by former pop singers and "reality TV" trash and crammed with overdone storylines, gratuitous nastiness and improbable melodrama, I suppose.
Corrie needs people like Vera, not people who look like they've just stepped out of a Spice Girls video.
RIP Elizabeth Dawn (born Sylvia Butterfield, MBE, 8th November 1939 – 25th September 2017)
Blimey! She weren't all that much older'n me!
ReplyDeleteEee ba gum! But did you ever get to go to a discotheque with Ivy Tilsley? Jx
DeleteNo,but I were in t'pub wi' Elsie one time. (The late Pat Phoenix)
Delete"I was really something when I was young. A different lad every night of the week, they queued up just to walk me 'ome from work. An' then the dance 'alls...'Ow I come to throw meself away on a nothin' like Arnold Tanner I'll never know. I could 'ave done anythin'. Got anywhere. I don't just mean fellers. I mean life generally. I was a fighter..." Jx
DeleteWe still have Mary and Norris... and Gemma has potential.
ReplyDeleteThough I can't bear Michelle - she is so wooden... and bland.
God bless Vera!
Sx
The only name I recognise there is Norris. I probably haven't watched a whole episode since Alf Roberts died... Jx
DeleteFab actress, she will be missed.
ReplyDeleteAnd if, as is rumoured, they write Rita Fairclough out, there'll barely be a matriarch left - in a show that was theirs by birthright! Jx
Delete