Street party! As Coronation Street hits
50, Sally Dynevor reveals she’s beaten cancer - and shares her joy of getting rid of her wig
Sally Dynevor has spent almost 25 years trusting the Coronation Street scriptwriters with every twist and turn of her on-screen life.
Next month, a few weeks after the soap has reached its half-century, she celebrates the silver anniversary of her arrival on the famous Weatherfield cobbles.
And what a life the writers thought up for her TV character, the wilful, snobbish and upwardly mobile Sally Webster.
Happy birthday: Next month, a few weeks after Coronation Street has reached its half-century, she celebrates the silver anniversary of her arrival on the famous Weatherfield cobbles
The real Sally laughs uproariously about how she reckons the TV Sally has had something in the region of nine affairs, which must qualify her as 'quite a trollop'.
This week she is to be embroiled in the major 50th anniversary ratings-puller, a fatal tram crash that rocks the Street, and presumably furnishes actors like her with plotlines for years to come.
Back in the real world, however, Sally, 47, is pondering how the scriptwriters will deal with her own personal milestone.
For the last four months she has gone into work every day wearing a wig – a constant reminder of the cancer treatment she has been undergoing away from the cameras.
In the New Year, though, she thinks her own hair will be long enough to warrant a ceremonial throwing away of the wig, and she's impatient to see just how her new look – revealed for the first time for Weekend magazine – will be dealt with by the writers.
'I'm making this up, because I don't actually know what will happen, but I think Sally may have some sort of breakdown and go upstairs and come down looking completely different,' she says, making a light-hearted reference to the memorable occasion when one of her on-screen daughters went upstairs played by one actress and came down played by another.
Seriously though, she can't wait to lose the wig.
Inspiring: To prepare for the part – long before she knew she would be getting first-hand knowledge of what it means to have breast cancer – Sally went to a charity dinner and watched women who had lost a breast walk up and down the catwalk
'It just drives me mad. I've got my
own hair now, but it's really short – although everyone says it's great
and looks really funky.'
Yet
to Sally it still screams 'cancer', and because of this she will be
glad to consign it to the bin.
'I really don't want to be defined by it, and I've moved on,' she explains.
When the champagne corks pop next month, it won't just be Sally's
survival that is being celebrated. She is very clear about the fact
that the cancer experience is just one chapter of her life. She still
can't quite believe she has been part of Coronation Street for a
quarter of a century.
When
she landed the part of Kevin Webster's girlfriend – her first
appearance was in January 1986 – she thought it would maybe last for a
couple of episodes, on the grounds that 'he's bound to have lots of
girlfriends'.
But viewers warmed to the feisty Sally, and her relationship with Kevin – including marriage, numerous affairs on both sides, divorce Kand remarriage – has gripped millions.
The relentless nature of the infidelity caused Sally to have a word with the show's producers, however.
'I remember saying to them, "Please don't give her any more affairs. I just feel too old!"' Sally cites a meeting with the late, great Pat Phoenix – Coronation Street icon Elsie Tanner – as her inspiration for getting into acting in the first place. 'I said, "I want to be an actress", and she said, "Well, you've got to work very, very hard and put everything else aside."
While I knew from 13 what I would like to do, I was absolutely sure when I met her.' When she finally made it onto Coronation Street, she was reunited with an old acting friend – who later became her husband on the show.
'My very first scene was when Sally got splashed by Kevin's van,' she says. 'That was amazing really, because I was at Oldham Theatre with Michael [Le Vell, who plays Kevin] when I was 13 and we had done plays together.'
And there was far greater drama to come. There was the public catfight with Denise Welch, who played Kevin's mistress, Natalie Horrocks. And no fan of the show can forget her giving birth in 1990 in Don Brennan's taxi in Rosamund Street (hence 'Rosie' Webster).
There is no set for the neighbouring street, so filming took place at a real location in Salford. 'I had my legs up on the back of this car seat pretending to have a baby, and there were loads of kids watching.
Never a dull moment: Sally Webster has had something in the region of
nine affairs, which must qualify her as 'quite a trollop', says the actress
We had to beg them not to shout obscenities so we could film.'
Ironically, however, her most dramatic story-line of all mirrored real life in a way she could never have imagined. By dreadful coincidence, on the very day she had been filming scenes in which her Coronation Street character was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was told she had breast cancer in real life.
Suddenly, the plotline she had thought was 'an amazing story' was something rather closer to home. When her consultant broke the news, her first reaction was to collapse. Her second was to tell him he had mixed fact up with fiction.
'I remember thinking, "No, you've got mixed up. I've just been playing
these scenes."' It was for real, however, and now she accepts that it
was the authenticity of the scripts that made her seek medical help in
the first place.
To
prepare for the part – long before she knew she would be getting
first-hand knowledge of what it means to have breast cancer – she went
to a charity dinner and watched women who had lost a breast walk up and
down the catwalk.
She found it inspiring, but also chilling. 'Your breasts and your hair are what make you a woman, and to lose them is so cruel,' was her conclusion. As she started learning her scripts, however, a niggling thought kept creeping into her mind. She had felt a strange 'little thing' in her own breast.
By dreadful coincidence, been filming scenes in which her Coronation Street character was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was told she had breast cancer in real life
'It didn't feel like I imagined a
lump to feel. It was more like a flat disc, about a centimetre long,
and it wasn't on the fleshy part of the breast.'
More
for reassurance than out of real fear, she sought the advice of the
Coronation Street nurse, who in turn arranged an immediate appointment.
Sally admits, with a little shame Websterthat even while waiting for the biopsy results, she was privately thinking it would amount to nothing, but that 'I could use some of the angst in the performance'. She asked to be allowed to play some of her pivotal scenes before she received her own medical news.
'It was the first time in my whole
acting career that I didn't come out of character all day. I had to
feel what this woman was feeling. The director kept saying to me,
"Sally, smile, it's not real."'
Her
husband, Tim, a writer on rival soap Emmerdale, accompanied her to the
surgery for her test results. When they left, she cried uncontrollably.
Worse was to follow.
A
lumpectomy, performed two days after her diagnosis, showed that the
cancer had spread, and chemotherapy was needed, which 'in a way was
worse than the diagnosis'.
She jokes that her family 'tried to make
chemo fun', but there is no doubt that it was a gruelling process.
When she had her head shaved, one of her daughters, Hattie, seven, fetched a bowl to collect the hair in and said, laughing, 'Mummy, you look so funny.' Her other daughter, Phoebe, 15, told her she looked beautiful, 'which I really didn't,' says Sally. It is clear that her family – she also has a son, Sam, 13 – got her through the worst of times.
When she came back to work she told her bosses she would like her name on the credits to be changed from Sally Whittaker, her stage name, to Sally Dynevor, her married one. She said it was time to 'put the young actress called Sally Whittaker' behind her. Sally's need for time off left the Coronation Street producers with a problem, however.
To explain her character's absence, the scriptwriters had her constantly 'resting upstairs'. 'They had Kevin say I'd been having radiotherapy and needed a lie-down. I was upstairs for six months!' Now, she reveals she feels a little peeved that the cancer storyline was so abruptly ended. 'I did feel as though the storyline was taken away from me because of what happened in my own life.'
However, her disappointment was short-lived. Sally says she was given 'amazing scripts that were exactly what I came into the business to do'.
Returning to work, and recent storylines such as the tangled emotional web created by Kevin's affair and his resulting lovechild, have given her a new sparkle. 'It's amazing, I have so much energy,' she says.
'I'm working all hours but loving it. Other women are diagnosed all the time, and I just want to say to them that you will, hopefully, get through it. I don't want to say, "Always be positive", because some days you aren't, but there is a life after it.' Sally is the first to admit the soap format means she hasn't had to put everything else aside.
Her job, she points out, is quite child-friendly, meaning she gets to spend lots of time with her children. 'You can be working flat out on a storyline, then suddenly the spotlight is off, and for months you might be coming in at two and finishing at four. I have thought of packing it all in, but I love it so much, and I think the kids are happy knowing I love my job.' Phoebe is following in her mother's footsteps.
'The cancer storyline was the most
important in all my years playing Sally. It has been a
turning point because it changed both our lives'
Earlier this year she played Siobhan Mailey in BBC1's Waterloo Road, and she has just finished filming an episode of Monroe, a new ITV medical drama.
She is back at school, studying for her GCSEs, but Sally is all too aware of the difficult choices ahead. 'My theory was that she should do English at university, and then do a year acting, but I just don't know any more,' she admits.
'I'd love her to go to drama school, but it's difficult when she is getting offered jobs.' What of her own professional future? Since she is pondering how the scriptwriters will deal with her wig coming off, it's safe to assume Sally doesn't come a cropper under the tram. Whatever is in store, though, will hardly be comparable.
'The cancer storyline was the most important in all my years playing Sally,' she says. 'It has been a turning point because it changed both our lives. There's no storyline they could give me now that I could feel as strongly about as that one.'
Off-screen too, it seems, she feels she has faced the ultimate challenge, and emerged humbled by it. Little wonder she is planning quite a celebration for that 25th anniversary.
Philip Nolan As part of the 50th anniversary, ITV has launched the Coronation Street 50th Anniversary charity appeal, to support three charities nominated by the cast. Visit www.corrie50appeal.co.uk
Whatever would Ena Sharples make of it now?
Roy Hattersley on why Coronation Street is a social history of Britain...
Can it really be 50 years since Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst first drank stout in the snug at the Rovers Return, and complained about landlady Annie Walker's 'airs and graces'?
Annie and Jack – her put-upon husband – were the first licensees of the pub around which the plot of Coronation Street is built.
The Rovers Return was, and remains, the place for the unguarded conversations that change lives and the uninhibited display of emotions that mark every Coronation Street wedding and funeral.
Iconic: Arthur Leslie and Doris Speed as Jack Walker and Annie Walker pictured in the Rover's Return pub
Annie Walker would be shocked to see how much the Rovers Return has changed. Liz McDonald, now the landlady, is far more proud of her cleavage than of her prospects of becoming president of the Weatherfield Licensed Victuallers' Association.
And her choice of husbands – a work-shy musician and a brutal ex-soldier – could hardly be more different from the gentle and ever-accommodating Jack. But times have changed and, by necessity, Coronation Street has changed with them.
Even the street itself is not what it used to be. Half a century ago Coronation Street was simply two rows of Victorian terraces facing each other across the cobbles. Owner-occupiers have long since moved in, with Audrey Roberts living in semi-detached superiority.
The corner shop – far more extensive than it was in Alf Roberts' day – is now owned by Asian businessman Dev Alahan.
Few things could be more typical of modern Britain than an Asian 'convenience store', selling anything and everything at all hours.
But half a century ago, Coronation Street would have been wary about such an enterprise – and its owner. Back then, immigrants never appeared in the programme. It wasn't until 1998 that the first Asian family – the Desais – moved in after criticism that the soap lacked minority actors. Today, Dev is proof of how Coronation Street has moved on.
Sex factor: Deirdre who has married Ken twice established a tradition of respectable promiscuity
Veteran viewers, like me, wonder if it has lost some of the warmth that was the programme's trademark. But nostalgia can deceive. Even in the innocence of the early episodes, there was murder and mayhem on the cobblestones.
And there's always been sex. Deirdre – who has married Ken twice – established Coronation Street's tradition of respectable promiscuity. Elsie Tanner, the scarlet woman of early episodes, carried on affairs with brazen abandon. In 1960 some viewers were shocked, others excited, by Elsie's behaviour.
Today it would hardly raise a ripple of reaction in the most straight-laced living-room. Deirdre still sleeps around but maintains an air of prim superiority.
Perhaps society is more liberated – others would say immoral – than it was 50 years ago. It's certainly more open about death and illness, and Coronation Street reflects the new reality. Sally Webster was diagnosed as suffering from breast cancer and Alma Sedgewick – once the siren of the Rovers Return – died in a hospice.
Mike Baldwin stumbled through episode after episode with the senile dementia that eventually killed him. Fifty years ago these subjects would have been taboo on television, as they then were in polite conversation.
Over the years Coronation Street has created characters of almost Dickensian brilliance. Jack Duckworth – lost to the series less than a month ago – was, in turn, admirable and deplorable, lovable and detestable, noble and ridiculous.
Jubilee: The Coronation Street cast celebrate 25 years in 1985
In fact, he exhibited all the foibles of a real human being. With Vera, his wife, he made a classic partnership – a couple held together as much by mutual irritation as by love.
No sane person would have wanted Jack, and his pigeons, to live next door – even less to have him sitting across the breakfast table with his stomach bulging out of his dirty vest. But while he was on the other side of the screen, Jack Duckworth added to the joys of life.
The Duckworths were the dramatic descendants of another couple who, long ago, exhibited the same combination of lovable and deplorable qualities. Stan Ogden was lazy as well as feckless, but heroic Hilda kept him in cigarettes and beer by working as the pub's cleaner.
One day, while wiping down the bar with a dirty rag, she made the sort of speech that elevates Coronation Street above its rivals. Offended by a rebuke from the always snobbish Annie Walker, she stood on her bedraggled dignity.
Cleaners, she said, also have their pride and, because of their honest labour, they are entitled to respect. The humble and meek were exalted. Watching Coronation Street that night, I rose from my armchair and cheered.
There have always been scroungers on the show and some have been attractive. But hard work and perseverance have always been portrayed as major virtues, while attempts to 'get rich quick' usually end in disaster. Ken Barlow became a briefly heroic figure when he chose trolley-chasing in a supermarket rather than unemployment.
Rita Sullivan, at work behind the newsagent's counter, must have first drawn her pension when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and Betty must have made her first Rovers hotpot before the war. But they still labour on.
'Hard work and perseverance have always been portrayed as major virtues, while attempts to "get rich quick" usually end in disaster'
As a sign of the times, one of the machinists in the underwear factory is a man. Sean Tully, who first appeared in 2003, is gay and joyously camp.
When Coronation Street was born, homosexuality was still a criminal offence, and the idea of a transsexual appearing in the soap was beyond belief. Yet Hayley Cropper is now accepted as a happily married woman and her past – as Harold – is forgotten.
Sophie Webster lives with her female partner under her parents' roof and her father, who had early doubts about her lifestyle, nobly defended her against accusations of perversion. Kevin Webster, like the real world, has become more enlightened.
I have no doubt that Coronation Street, reaching out to millions of viewers, has helped in the creation of a more tolerant and compassionate society as well as playing a part in some less desirable developments. It's preoccupied with teenagers – their sex lives, traumas and often unworthy ambitions.
Conspicuous consumption is the aim of most of the female characters. Is there a public house in the real world in which the barmaids own so many clothes? Ken Barlow still lives in the terraced house that he inherited from Albert Tatlock, his uncle. Aspiration has passed Coronation Street by. There is much about the modern Coronation Street that would shock Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst.
They ought, like the more mature viewers who have lost interest in flaming youth, to be consoled by the thought that many of the attributes that helped make Coronation Street a saga rather than a soap, still survive. It is well written, brilliantly acted and, for most of the time, gentle and warm-hearted.
There are few modern television series that can make the same claim.
CORRIE'S TEN MOST MEMORABLE WOMEN
Annie Walker: No-nonsense landlady of the Rovers which she ran until 1993
Elsie Tanner: The Street’s sex siren who was always rowing with neighbours
Raquel Watts: Ditzy wannabe model who stole - then broke - Curly’s heart
Deirdre Barlow: Long-suffering wife of Ken with an eventful love life of her own
Ena Sharples: Corrie’s original battleaxe with a sharp tongue but a warm heart
Vera Duckworth: Feisty and fierce, she: was a real troublemaker but softened with age
Rita Fairclough: Former exotic dancer, now a shoulder to cry on in the Kabin
Hilda Ogden: Cleaner Hilda loved a gossip – and couldn’t sing for toffee
Bet Lynch: Leopardskin-clad man-eater with a fondness for caustic put-downs
Karen McDonald: Brassy factory lass known for brawling in the street
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