Nancy Banks-Smith on Deirdre Barlow: ‘Disaster turned to comedy at her touch’
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Version 0 of 1. For 40 years while reviewing TV I couldn’t spell Deirdre. Was the “i” before the “e” or neither or either? Did the “er” come before the “re” or was it widdershins? For 40 flipping years I had to look Deirdre up, and Deirdre cropped up a lot. When 24 million people watch her wedding, you had better get the name of the bride right. Deirdre means sorrowful, which is a funny name for Coronation Street. She first appeared in an elderly era of Annies and Enas and Minnies and Elsies and she was something quite different. She wore glasses and she smoked and Ken Barlow and Mike Baldwin fought over her in the street. I was thrilled. I wore glasses and I smoked and, with luck, men would fight over me in the street. Well, never mind. Two out of three. Forty years on, Deirdre was the last person still smoking on TV, puffing away rebelliously in the back yard, knowing it got up Ken’s nose. Annoying Ken was her life’s work. He fancied the artistic type who floated about in a negligee and a boat like the Lady of Shalott. Probably reading Proust. Deirdre was altogether more down-to-earth. The last time I saw her on TV, she had made her usual uneatable meal (the look on her family’s faces showed just how inedible) and had snuggled down with a cheap magazine and a lowbrow chuckle while Ken walked the dog in the rain. Disaster turned to comedy at her touch. I can’t have dreamed – why would I dream something like that – the night she spent with Dev Alahan, he of the corner shop. I remember the dawning horror on his face as he sobered up and the cat-at-the-cream beam on hers. A smile so wide it seemed hooked over her ears. Coronation Street is matriarchal, and women came in clumps. Living inharmoniously in No 1 Coronation Street were three generations: Deirdre, her waspish mother Blanche (who had been a corset-maker of the whalebone and laces variety) and her daughter Tracy (who felled an unsatisfactory feller with a well-aimed object d’art). Murder was always on the cards at No 1, loneliness never. Deirdre’s premature death has prevented her natural progression to be a gloriously embarrassing grandmother. A version of Deirdre survives in The Archers. Lilian has the same raucous gin-and-it cackle, the lifelong inability to do anything domesticated, the dance-in-the-old-girl-yet spirit. It is something to know that we can still hear, like an echo, that indomitable laugh. From the Guardian archive: Nancy Banks-Smith on Deirdre Barlow’s adventures on Coronation Street On Deirdre’s affair with ex-boyfriend Mike Baldwin, before she reconciled with Ken Barlow in a hugely-rating episode, 22 Feb, 1983 For some time, reading other people’s papers on the Tube, I have been riveted by “Deirdre, don’t do it!” or “Did Deirdre do it?” Or, as my spectacles steamed up with the pressure of bodies and excitement, “Don’t diddle Doodre!” Arriving a little late at the excitement in Coronation Street, I can only enquire with a Japanese delicacy rather lost in the noise of breaking glass: ‘What has Deridre, er done? Deirdre, as I see you are looking vague, is the one who looks exactly like Montravia Kaskarak Hitari, the Afghan hound which did so well at Crufts and, as came out in the wash last night, she is up to her silky ears in an affair with Mike Baldwin, the sweat shop owner with the squeaky sofa. “Pack your bags and go to Baldwin!” cried Ken, casting her aside like an old clog. Understandably doubting his cast’s ability to handle the full gamut of emotion involved, or the better to observe their parting, the director shot much of this crucial episode from above. Ken did not ask what a strange man was doing hanging from the central light fitting like a bat. Ken, though brilliant – everybody says so – is not very bright. [Click here to see original article] On Deirdre’s trial for fraud at the hands of ex-boyfriend Jon Lindsay that led to to a campaign to “free the Wetherfield One”, 30 March, 1998 Frankly, I feel it was madness to choose a barrister who wears purple shirts. If your brief looks like a crook, it only confuses the jury. No wonder Deirdre, who is absolutely innocent, was found guilty on all counts in Coronation Street last night. She is now sharing a prison cell with the vivacious Margi Clarke, formerly of The Good Sex Guide. Margi is now presenting The Bad Girl’s Guide To Doing Bird. “Don’t,” she warned Deirdre, “borrow nothing. Don’t lend nothing. Don’t give nothing. If somebody tries to give you a hug, push them away. They’ll only be trying to get into your pocket or planting stuff.” Poor Deirdre’s neck, always her most eloquent feature, is working overtime. It’s too bad. That woman deserves the gratitude of spectacle-wearers everywhere. You knew it was all over for Deirdre when the purple-breasted bounder began his speech for the defence: “Her life has been nondescript, ordinary, not the stuff of dreams …” Not only was this blister an offence to the eyeball, he had obviously never watched Coronation Street. [Click here to see the original article] On Ken and Deirdre’s on-off-on-off marriage, 6 March, 2001 Deirdre has left Ken again. He told her they were moving to Scotland and might as well have said Sri Lanka. Outside a soap bubble, everything is Indian country. “Scotland! What would we do there!” cried Deirdre, her throat-a-bob, and exited stage right in a marked manner. Leaving her mother behind with Ken. You could study marital strategy for months and not come up with a neater trick than that. |