Radio 5 Breakfast came from Coronation Street on Tuesday. I heard part of an interview with Ken Barlow.
This addressed the question of why a young 1960 ‘intellectual’ had stayed in the area: a fundamental character flaw, suggested William Roach
Intriguing, for me, was the information that Ken has only one rival for longevity in a soap – Dr Bob Hughes in As the World Turns.
At the end of the 60’s we spent a winter in Canada, with access to US tv on cable. We became rather addicted.
First to the novelty of 24-hour programming. We even took to sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room so we could fall asleep to the blue & white flicker of whatever followed Johnny Carson (often a local station from Vermont).
We had not had all that much experience of tv anyway – we lived in a country which still had simply no service. Even back in England we had no tv at home (with only one channel & restricted hours of broadcasting) until I was a teenager, & as students there was only the one in the common room.
I remember the World Turning - exceedingly slowly, I always found. Events which took only a day in real time stretched over the whole week.
By contrast life in UK soaps is very speeded up – Ken has had relationships with nearly 30 women in less than 50 years, all accompanied with more drama than most of us see in one real lifetime
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