Tony Warren
Anthony McVay Simpson, better known by his stage name Tony Warren, was an English television screenwriter, best known for creating the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. He created other television dramas and wrote critically acclaimed novels. Warren was born at 3 Wilton Avenue, Lancashire, he attended Eccles Grammar School. He trained at the Elliott-Clarke theatre school in Liverpool, he adopted Warren as a stage name in his early acting career. He became a regular on BBC Radio Children's Hour and acted in many radio plays, performing with many actors who became household names through Coronation Street, most notably Violet Carson who played Ena Sharples and Doris Speed who played Annie Walker. In his memoirs, Over the Airwaves, Children's Hour producer, Trevor Hill, explains how Warren was an excitable young teenager at rehearsals, so much so that on one occasion Violet Carson warned "If that boy doesn't shut up, I'll smack his bottom!" During a unexpected transmission break from London while performing at the Leeds studio, Carson played and sang to the children a dialect song called "Bowtons Yard" in which the storyteller speaks about his neighbours.
Starting at Number 1 and ending at Number 12, he describes each person in turn and Warren admitted this is what gave him the inspiration for Coronation Street. Warren acted in several early ITV Plays of the Week. According to BBC producer Olive Shapley who had worked with Warren on Children's Hour, the idea for Florizel Street came to him late one night in 1959 while they were returning to Manchester by train. Shapley recalled: In 1960, Harry Elton at Granada commissioned a script from Warren for a show about "a street out there". Warren wrote all 13 episodes of the serial that ITV decided to air; when the show became a success, as creator of the show, he continued to write scripts until 1968, after which he moved on to other fields. However, he continued to write occasional scripts until the late-1970s, he was retained by ITV Studios as consultant to Coronation Street. Warren made a cameo appearance in the 50th anniversary live episode of Coronation Street in December 2010, he was played by David Dawson in the BBC drama The Road to Coronation Street in September that year.
In the 1990s he wrote a series of critically acclaimed novels, The Lights of Manchester, Foot of the Rainbow, Behind Closed Doors and Full Steam Ahead. He was the subject of a This Is Your Life television programme on 11 October 1995. Warren won a number of awards, all in relation to devising Coronation Street, he received a Special Achievement Award in Soap at the British Soap Awards 2000 and the National Television Landmark Award in 2005. His most recent accolade was at the Royal Television Society awards in which he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award; the society described the show as "the most successful television programme in British history". In 1994, Warren was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire. In 2008 he was awarded an honorary degree from Manchester Metropolitan University "in recognition for his contribution to ground-breaking television and creative writing which has helped put Manchester and Salford on the cultural map". Warren was gay from his early years on Coronation Street, at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
He said. Warren battled with alcohol addiction before attending rehabilitation. Warren died on 1 March 2016 after a short illness, his death was announced on Coronation Street's Twitter account. Tony Warren on IMDb
Betty Driver
Elizabeth Mary "Betty" Driver, was a British actress and singer, best known for her role as Betty Williams on the British soap opera, Coronation Street a role she played for 42 years from 1969 to 2011, appearing in more than 2,800 episodes. She had appeared as Mrs Edgley in Coronation Street spin-off Pardon the Expression opposite Arthur Lowe, her early career focused on her as a singer, appearing in musical films such as Boots! Boots! in 1934, opposite George Formby and Penny Paradise in 1938, directed by Carol Reed. She was made an MBE in the 2000 New Year Honours. Betty Driver was born in 1920 at the Prebend Nursing Home, the elder of two daughters of Frederick and Nellie Driver, she weighed 5.5 kg. Her father had fought in the trenches during the First World War and became a policeman. However, it is her mother. Driver commented, "the only way I can explain her behaviour is that she wanted to live out her ambitions through me."The Driver family moved to West Didsbury, Manchester, in 1922, where they resided in a semi-detached house alongside other police families.
Driver went to school at Wilbraham Road and was joined there by her younger sister Freda, who shared a class with a young Pat Phoenix, who would play the role of Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street. Driver described her parents as absent of affection, stating that they never celebrated birthdays and gave her toys and gifts. Though she maintained her father never beat them, their mother "more lashed out". Driver's mother never wanted children and developed an interest in her daughter only when she discovered she had a talent for singing; when she was 7, the Drivers went to see a production called the Quaintesques, a group of men dressed as women, when the star, Billy Manders, asked the audience to join in with a chorus. Driver's singing stood out so much that Manders asked her to sing with him. From on, Driver's mother began taking her to various talent contests in Manchester, she won them all, she has commented, "I imitated hits by Gracie Fields such as'Sing As We Go', and'The Biggest Aspidistra In the World', corny little numbers that I detested but mother adored...
I think she was a frustrated performer herself and she was determined that my sister Freda and I were going to fulfil all her dreams." At the age of 8, Driver began performing professionally, forced by her mother to appear with Terence Byron Repertory Theatre Company. She was singing for the BBC by the age of 10 and began touring across the UK in her first revue at the age of 12. While performing in London at the age of 14, Driver was spotted by the agent Bert Aza, in partnership with his brother Archie Pitt, Gracie Fields' husband. Despite her young age, he booked her for the lead in a revival of Mr Tower Of London which ran for about 2 years; the same show had brought Gracie Fields to prominence 19 years earlier. She was approached by George Formby after he and his wife Beryl Formby saw her perform in Manchester; the Formbys wanted Driver to appear in their new film Boots! Boots!, but according to Driver, when Beryl Formby saw her rehearsing, she decided that she did not want to be outperformed by Driver and sent her away.
In fact, it is now known that Driver did indeed perform in the film and her scene was included in the original release. In 1938, an edited version of the film was released. A restored version of the film has been released on DVD which confirms the involvement of Driver in the film. At 16 she was in a West End show called Beauty. Film director Basil Dean, after seeing her in Jimmy Hunter's Brighton Follies, cast her in the 1938 film Penny Paradise, filmed at ATP studios in Ealing. After a few months of variety and radio work, she returned to the studio to make her second film, Let's Be Famous, they had just completed the film when the Second World War was announced and the studios were closed down. Nineteen at the time, Driver resumed touring the country in variety shows, it was at this time that her image altered. Against her mother's wishes and her sister modernised her performance and Driver became a ballad singer. Shortly after, during a six-month run in a revue called Twice In A Blue Moon and her sister parted company with their mother following a cardiac asthma attack which restricted her mobility.
Driver continued in variety, opening in the Coventry Hippodrome and sharing the bill with the Andrews family - father Ted, mother Barbara and Julie. She made regular trips to Bristol to sing on a radio show called Ack Ack Beer Beer and made her final film in 1941 Facing the Music. In the 1940s, she became a noted big band singer. During the Second World War, Driver travelled through Europe with ENSA, she appeared for seven years on the radio show Henry Hall's Guest Night and on her own show, A Date with Betty, broadcast live from the People's Palace in London's East End on 14 July 1949. The show's format was based around Driver doing sketches and introducing guests. All her words were scripted by a young Bob Monkhouse, she became an established singer during this time. When she was 14, she made her first record "Jubilee Baby", had another major success with "The Sailor with the Navy Blue Eyes" and made several more hit records. Betty travelled to
Penny
A penny is a coin or a unit of currency in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius, it is the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is the formal name of the British penny and the informal name of one American cent as well as the informal Irish designation of 1 cent euro coin, it is the informal name of the cent unit of account in Canada, although one cent coins are no longer minted there. The name is used in reference to various historical currencies derived from the Carolingian system, such as the French denier and the German pfennig, it may be informally used to refer to any similar smallest-denomination coin, such as the euro cent or Chinese fen. The Carolingian penny was a.940-fine silver coin weighing 1/240 pound. It was adopted by Offa of Mercia and other English kings and remained the principal currency in Europe over the next few centuries until repeated debasements necessitated the development of more valuable coins; the British penny remained a silver coin until the expense of the Napoleonic Wars prompted the use of base metals in 1797.
Despite the decimalization of currencies in the United States and throughout the British Commonwealth, the name remains in informal use. No penny is formally subdivided, although farthings and half cents have been minted and the mill remains in use as a unit of account in some contexts. Penny is first attested in a 1394 Scots text, a variant of Old English peni, a development of numerous variations including pennig and pending; the etymology of the term "penny" is uncertain, although cognates are common across all Germanic languages and suggest a base *pan-, *pann-, or *pand- with the individualizing suffix -ing. Common suggestions include that it was *panding as a Low Franconian form of Old High German pfant "pawn", it has been proposed that it may represent an early borrowing of Punic pn, as the face of Carthaginian goddess Tanit was represented on nearly all Carthaginian currency. Following decimalization, the British and Irish coins were marked "new penny" until 1982 and 1985, respectively.
The regular plural pennies fell out of use in England from the 16th century, except in reference to coins considered individually. It remains common in Scottish English and is standard for all senses in American English, however, the informal "penny" is only used of the coins in any case, values being expressed in "cents"; the informal name for the American cent seems to have spread from New York State. In British English, prior to decimalization, values from two to eleven pence and of twenty pence are written and spoken as a single word, as twopence or tuppence, threepence or thruppence, &c. Where a single coin represented a number of pence, it was treated as a single noun, as a sixpence or two eightpences. Thus, "a threepence" would be single coin of that value whereas "three pence" would be its value and "three pennies" would be three penny coins. In British English, divisions of a penny were added to such combinations without a conjunction, as sixpence-farthing, such constructions were treated as single nouns.
Adjectival use of such coins used the ending -penny, as sixpenny. The British abbreviation d. derived from the Latin denarius. It followed the amount after a space, it has been replaced since decimalization by p written without a space or period. From this abbreviation, it is common to speak of pennies and values in pence as "p". In North America, it is common to abbreviate cents with the currency symbol ¢. Elsewhere, it is written with a simple c; the medieval silver penny was modeled on similar coins in antiquity, such as the Greek drachma, the Carthaginian shekel, the Roman denarius. Forms of these seem to have reached as far as Sweden; the use of Roman currency in Britain seems to have fallen off after the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Saxon invasions. Charlemagne's father Pepin the Short instituted a major currency reform around AD 755, aiming to reorganise Francia's previous silver standard with a standardized.940-fine denier weighing 1⁄240 pound. Around 790, Charlemagne introduced a new.950 or.960-fine penny with a smaller diameter.
Surviving specimens have an average weight of 1.70 grams, although some estimate the original ideal mass at 1.76 grams. Despite the purity and quality of these pennies, they were rejected by traders throughout the Carolingian period in favor of the gold coins used elsewhere, a situation that led to repeated legislation against such refusal to accept the king's currency; some of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms copied the solidus, the late Roman gold coin. Around AD 641–670, there seems to have been a movement to use coins with a lower gold content; this decreased their value and may have increased the number that could be minted, but these paler coins do not seem to have solved the problem of the value and scarcity of the currency
Leonard Swindley
Leonard Swindley is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera, Coronation Street. He was an original character played by actor Arthur Lowe between 1960 and 1965; the character of Mr. Swindley appeared as the central figure in two spin-off series following his departure from the Street - Pardon the Expression and Turn Out the Lights, making him a unique character in British soap opera. At the time filming commenced of the pilot episode of Coronation Street, the character of Leonard Swindley had not been cast; because he wasn't supposed to appear until episode three, auditions were still taking place until Arthur Lowe walked in and read for the producers. Lowe, who went on to become most recognised as Captain Mainwaring in sitcom Dad's Army, was an established actor by the time of his Coronation Street casting, having been in several feature films, but it was his turn as pompous Mr. Swindley that made him a household name in the early 60s. In December 1961, only a year after the show's launch, a strike of the actor's union Equity meant that Lowe, not under contract with the show at that point, was forced to leave the series along with several other stars of the Street.
The strike lasted until April 1962, Lowe agreed to reprise his role once again, returning in June along with Eileen Derbyshire. Upon hearing of Lowe's decision to quit the series in 1965, ITV bosses offered him the chance to continue in the role as the star of a new sitcom based on his character; the end result Pardon The Expression debuted two months on from his final appearance in Coronation Street and ran for two series until 1966. It in turn produced its own spin-off Turn Out The Lights, again based on Swindley, which lasted only six episodes. Leonard Swindley, known as'Mr Swindley' to most people, was a lay preacher for the Glad Tidings Mission Hall, a local missionary church on Coronation Street, chairman of the committee. Swindley came from a family of drapers, had inherited his shop'Swindley's Emporium' from his father; the clothes store, situated on Victoria Street employed Emily Nugent. Swindley, in his role as lay preacher, was a central figure in the local community; the Mission Hall would play host charity ventures and plays among other uses.
Swindley and his assistant Emily Nugent organised several trips out for the locals. In 1962, Swindley's clothes store was piling debts forced him to sell up; the buyer, Niklos Papagopoulos, was the owner of a successful chain of clothes shops in Manchester called'Gamma Garments'. Papagopoulos re-opened the store as Gamma weeks deciding to keep Swindley on as manager and Emily and Doreen Lostock as his assistants. After working for over three years, Swindley's relationship with his colleague Emily grew and in 1964 she proposed. Swindley hesitated before accepting and a date was set for only a few weeks later; when the wedding day came however, Emily realised that neither of them loved each other and decided to call off the marriage. He assured her that he felt the same way and the pair managed to salvage their friendship to continue working together; the next year, following Arthur Lowe's decision to quit, Swindley was offered a promotion at Gamma Garments and duly accepted, leaving the Mission, Weatherfield behind.
The character moved on to work as manager for Dobson and Hawkes, the clothes store seen in the spin-off Pardon The Expression. In 1980, he sends a telegram to Emily congratulating her on her second wedding to Arnold Swain
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
Frank Barlow (Coronation Street)
Frank Barlow is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera, Coronation Street, played by Frank Pemberton As the head of the show's core Barlow family, Frank was one of the original twenty-one characters at the show's inception in 1960, along with wife Ida and sons Ken and David. In his time on Coronation Street, Frank survived the death of Ida in 1961 and entered into a controversial relationship with younger woman Christine Appleby, he remained in a prominent role until May 1964, when the character was written out by series producer Tim Aspinall. Pemberton reprised the role for two further episodes, in 1967 and 1971. Frank last appeared at the funeral of daughter-in-law Valerie Barlow. Frank's son Ken tells his son Peter of his death in April 1975. Pemberton never recovered from being made to leave a role he adored, suffered a stroke in 1965, he found work hard to come by in the following years and suffered a fatal stroke in 1971, just a few weeks after his final appearance on the show.
Frank Pemberton was offered the role of Frank on the day of his audition, after he had heard Granada were prepared to pay £40 a week for a "middle-aged dad with a genuine Lancashire accent". He described the day as "the most exciting" of his life. Postman Frank has been described as the archetypal "hard-working northern man", he dedicated his life to providing for his family; the family's working-class background meant Frank was resentful of Ken upon his return from university prior to the first episode, their differences spilled out into the early episodes and continued throughout. Frank Barlow was born in 1913 to Sidney Barlow. Frank joined the navy when he was 16 and he became much a "man's man", his influences in life from that early age were men, he depended on his superiors when his father Sidney died and Frank's mother Edna was taken ill soon after and spent time in a psychiatric unit, which prompted Frank to leave the Navy once his training was finished. A few years Frank was introduced to Ida Leathers, a friend of his sister Marjorie, the pair fell for each other.
Frank and Ida married on 1 May 1938, went on to have two sons and David. Frank Barlow was introduced as the pipe-smoking head of the Barlow family in the first episode of the Street in 1960. Frank resented the way his son Ken thought himself superior to his family and their neighbours, there was friction between the pair when Ken returned home from university. However, all their problems were put aside by the end of 1961 when they found themselves living alone. Second son David had left the Street in the summer to begin a new career as a footballer, in September, Frank's wife Ida had died under the wheels of a bus. Ida's untimely death was a shock for Frank, who took out his frustrations on Ken and told him he was nothing but a disappointment when he learned that Ken was out of work, they learned to cope together. In early 1963 Frank found love once again when his friendship with Christine Appleby, a widow, became something more, their short-lived affair slipped into an engagement and shocked the neighbours as Christine had been at school with Ken.
The romance ended when the age difference became too much and Christine realised her feelings for him were not as strong as his for her. Frank recovered from his disastrous relationship with Christine by quitting his job at the post office to open a DIY shop on Victoria Street; the new venture was a success but had to close due to fire damage in the year. In 1964, Frank won £500 on the premium bonds and chose to leave the Street for a new life in Wilmslow, he sold the shop and celebrated his farewell in the Rovers Return Inn, on the same night Martha Longhurst died. He left the street two weeks without saying goodbye to Ken. Frank made two further visits to the street, once in 1967, when Ken refused to pay a fine and instead went to prison, in 1971, when he arrived for the funeral of Ken's wife Valerie. Frank died at some point between 1971 and April 1975
