Let’s float along this world-famous cobbled street with its bay-windowed terrace houses, arching marmalade cats and concerned, creased faces. Now take a sharp 90-degree turn across swept flagstones that have bore witness to out-of-control HGVs, cardiac arrests and broken bones. Push through forest-green double doors and enter an arena of brown, brown, brown. Brown wooden seats, brown wooden tables, brown bar, brown floorboards and brown-pattern wallpaper featuring various pale and dark brown blocky shapes and hoops. Colours of Lancashire hotpot. This is the interior of Coronation Street’s Rovers Return, adjacent to the main studio building in the backlot of Manchester’s Granada compound.
The Rovers wasn’t in use on this particular Friday afternoon, momentarily spared the sideways glances of Barlow, Baldwin and Ogden, while quiet-working electricians tampered with wires and connections. Along the horseshoe-shaped bar that served (left to right) lager, mild, Guinness and bitter, huddled an array of highly familiar, non-Corry faces, making use of the Rovers’ set as a quirky meeting point.
The gathered performers were a rogue’s gallery of light entertainment, faces animated by jocularity, reminiscing of wild, backstage intrigue, some of it of a homosexual nature, from the wartime up to the 1984 present. Grinning and cracking one-liners in a mechanised manner was Kenny Lynch, a black comedian/singer who was solidly subservient to the Seventies format of gag and giggle. Leading the banter, he was bright-eyed, lively and whip-crack sharp. Well-honed jokes, some of a blue nature, spewed like hot geysers from his comedy core. To his side was Burt Kwouk, known to millions as Cato Fong from Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther films. Kwouk was smiling and occasionally flicking back his black fringe, in familiar territory here, having been born not in the Orient but Granadaland’s Warrington. He growled replies, like his throat was coated with coarse gravel. Across from Kwouk perched mauve-haired Mollie Sugden, grandma to a nation, a polished, ruby-encrusted female Clive Dunn, whooping with disbelief and scoffing at Lynch’s tall tales of hanging out with The Beatles. In Sugden’s shadow, typecast nervous ninny Nerys Hughes of Liver Birdsfame nodded absently while rummaging through her handbag, looking for tissues, mirror and sweets, her high-pitched proto-WAG accent transmitting on a higher frequency than her acting colleagues.
Resting quietly at the head of the table, thoroughly enjoying the raillery provided by this staggeringly disparate mob, presided the unlikely ringleader Ralph McTell, a folk singer who had found major success in 1974 with his tramp’s canticle “Streets Of London”. His downbeat composition, a favourite among schoolteachers with hippie tendencies, had reached No.2, making McTell a household name. McTell had hand-chosen this rabble for his children’s TV programme Tickle On The Tum, which had been filmed in the Granada studios throughout the week. McTell had the body of the Incredible Hulk, with arms as forceful as a JCB digger and a powerful-set jaw attached to a head of pure, prime beef. If he were painted silver, he’d make an effectively frightening sci-fi robot with crunching iron mandibles.
Directly opposite McTell sat 31-year-old Newcastle upon Tyne actor Tim Healy, dressed in a navy V-neck jumper, checked shirt, well-worn jeans and seen-better-days biker boots. He was listening intently to these seasoned professionals with a controlled half-smile. Healy was already a recognisable figure on Britain’s streets, a rising star due to his appearances as Dennis Patterson on the hugely popular Central production Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Episode four of the first series was airing that night on ITV at 9pm, following the pedestrian comedy A Fine Romance. To children across Britain, Healy would shortly introduce himself as Barney Bodger, an odd-job man on Tickle On The Tum who, though amiable enough, was a home-improvement disaster zone. In Bodger character, Healy, a former stand-up comedian, made McTell cry with laughter. That morning in filming, scenes involving Healy and McTell had taken up to ten takes; even Granada’s camera operators had trouble remaining focused.
Beneath the Rovers Returns’ wall-mounted decorative brass plates that spoke of agriculture and Victorian manual labour, Healy’s mind rested on more pressing matters – snooker. He wanted to be by the hearth in Newcastle for 10.30pm so he could tune in to see Kirk Stevens and Tony Meo in the Quarter-Final of the Lada Classic, right after the News At Ten. With his white suits and shirts, Stevens’ disco styling was alarmingly similar to John Travolta’s Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, but Stevens was a charlatan in the company of snooker’s true pros – the likes of Ray Reardon, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor, Terry Griffiths and the game’s new Pele, Steve Davis. Healy adored snooker and played the game at every possible opportunity. His biggest break was 27. Two years previously in the Lada Classic, Davis had given the world its first televised maximum break in a Quarter-Final in Oldham against John Spencer. Healy had watched, transfixed. He occasionally daydreamed of calmly potting ball after ball and claiming his own 147, but then again, he would also play out Newcastle United games in his head. Keegan!
“Hey, mate, I saw you in that football film last week,” Lynch shouted across to Healy. “That World Cup one. I always thought it was countries in the World Cup, but this was normal football clubs, ain’t that right?”
“It wasn’t the World Cup like y’knaa today,” Healy corrected. “It was before the FIFA World Cup – it was the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, held in Italy for two years, before the First World War. So you liked the film then, eh?”
“Sports films don’t usually interest me,” Lynch admitted, “cos they’re crap, but there was a good story to that and a half-decent cast.”
“What was that, then?” McTell cut in. “Tim, I didn’t know you’d done films.”
“Oh aye,” Healy nodded. “Canny line-up we had an’ all. It wasn’t a Hollywood production. Nothing like that. It was a TV film, for Tyne Tees.” The table hushed and Healy found himself with a captive audience. Raising an eyebrow in mock exasperation, he began his monologue. “Y’knaa the story, do you – aboot West Auckland Town Football Club?”
Lynch, McTell, Hughes, Sugden and Kwouk all shook their head.
“Bloody hell, man. In 1909, Sir Thomas Lipton – the tea fella – had the idea of a football world cup. This was years before the actual, real thing that started in 1930 in Uruguay. The Lipton’s Trophy was staged in Turin. Everyone took it seriously in Europe, except, of course, the English FA. So you had Juventus and Torino from Italy, Zurich from Switzerland, but the English sent an amateur side, West Auckland Town, from Durham way. They were basically a team of coalminers, but somehow they managed to win the World Cup not once, but twice, in 1909 and 1911. The last game, in the 1911 Final, they trounced Juventus 6-1.”
“I can’t understand a word he says,” Sugden muttered to her former Liver Birds co-star Hughes.
“He sounds Indian to me,” Hughes quietly responded.
“All this is incredible stuff,” McTell spoke, “an English amateur team winning the World Cup twice before the First World War. Why had I never heard about this?”
“It’s bizarre, isn’t it?” Healy accepted. “A lost piece of our sporting heritage. So I was asked if I wanted to be in a film aboot it, A Captain’s Tale, and I could barely believe my luck. It was just a matter of the accent fitting in, I think.”
“The funny thing is,” Lynch remarked, “is that it’s got Dennis Waterman in it, a cockney geezer playing a Geordie, ain’t that right, Tim?”
“Aye, that’s right,” Healy replied, squinting, like he did on Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. “Dennis Waterman, he financed it – it cost around £1.5m. Then you had Richie Griffiths, Rod Culbertson, Phil Croskin, Jeremy Bulloch. I’ll do the whole team for you in a minute. So this was my first big part. I’d been working for ten years, doing little bits, Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm, all them, Crown Court, Play For Today, all the things that actors do.”
“So you’ve been here before?” Hughes asked, eyes wide with childlike interest. “On the Street?”
“I ’ave, pet, aye,” Healy responded. “I was a bingo caller – well, a checker, a bingo checker. In Emmerdale Farm, I was a village idiot. In Crown Court, I was a mate on a fishing ship and I was a fish filleter on Play For Today, written by Tom Hadaway, a Geordie writer – one of my favourite writers, actually. He wrote a few episodes of When The Boat Comes In.”
“But the thing is,” Lynch told the table, “is that this team, Auckland…”
“West Auckland,” Healy corrected.
“West Auckland,” Lynch continued, “is that they win the cup outright, cos they win it twice, and take it back up north, and then it gets nicked!”
“Which is tragic,” Healy said. “They never found it. I think it was swiped in the Sixties and they would have melted it doon. For a little town like that, it was tragic. Their whole claim to fame was to win this cup. And it was worth much, much more than money, y’knaa. They were heartbroken. But now they’ve put a replica in there. Dennis Waterman presented them with the replica and they put it in this casket, after the film. I couldn’t get there because I was abroad. But they’ve got a replica in there now, but it’s not quite the same. True that, yeah.”
“Fantastic story,” McTell grinned with pride, then, having taken a sip of tea, glanced down at his notes on the table. “Now, Tim and Nerys, you’re both done – there’s just a few scenes left to shoot with me, Kenny, Burt and Mollie, so maybe you should get on your way before this fog closes in.”
“Right you are,” Healy said. “I’ll make the snooker easily, then.”
“Are you heading back to Newcastle?” Hughes enquired. “Cos I want to try and see The Smiths tonight.”
“The who?” replied Healy.
“No, The Smiths,” Hughes said. “With Morrissey. I like their sound.”
“Is that the miserable lot?” enquired Lynch. “With the quiffs?”
“I don’t find them miserable,” Hughes defended. “I think they’re quite sensitive and tuneful.”
“Are they playing tonight?” McTell asked.
“Well, the thing is, I don’t know,” Hughes admitted, “but this is Manchester and it’s Friday night… I just expected they’d be playing somewhere, on the underground scene, in a small bar somewhere.”
“You’re a bit old for all that, aren’t you?” Mollie Sugden questioned. “Underground scenes and gallivanting around.”
“Too old?” Hughes gasped. “You might have been my mother in The Liver Birds, but you’re not in real life!”
For a few moments, Sugden’s face looked like it was being pulled in three directions, then her mouth gaped open with outrage and she looked away.
At precisely that moment, young Coronation Street actors Nigel Pivaro and Kevin Kennedy – Terry Duckworth and Curly Watts respectively – slammed through the Rovers’ doors, closely followed by the smouldering Pat Phoenix, AKA Elsie Tanner, who had a crooked reefer hanging out of her stiffened mouth. “What are you fuckin’ lookin’ at?” Phoenix threw at the seated ensemble. “You nosey sods.”
Sugden tutted loudly and tightened her lips further in Mrs Slocombe-like disgust.
Ignoring Elsie Tanner’s demented cawing, Nerys Hughes called across to Pivaro and Kennedy to test their intimate knowledge of Manchester nightlife. “Excuse me, Curly, Terry, could you tell me if The Smiths are playing locally tonight?”
Nigel Pivaro winked like a mischievous window cleaner at Kevin Kennedy and the pair, with humorous eyes, approached the table. In the background, at the bar, Pat Phoenix asked for a glass of champagne. An electrician removed a screwdriver from his mouth and reminded Phoenix that she wasn’t in a real pub. Phoenix shrugged and turned away from the electrician in dramatic fashion: “So I’m not.”
“Eh,” Pivaro said to Kennedy with a treacly Manc twang, “eh, eh, eh, Kev mate, aren’t you in The Smiths? Aren’t you… in… The Smiths?”
Kennedy glared wide-eyed through circular spectacles: “Funny.”
“He’s not in The Smiths,” Hughes coquettishly smiled. “You don’t get in bands looking like Curly.”
Kennedy froze.
The truth was, Kennedy had practically been in The Smiths, having lined up in a group called The Paris Valentinos alongside Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke in the late Seventies. Kennedy had been the front man, the focal point – the singer.
“You’re right,” said Kennedy with a neutral visage. “Somebody like me would never be in a band.”
Pivaro, recognising Healy, tapped him on the back. “Eh, mate, I like Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It’s keeping me in on Friday nights, so it’s got something going for it. Saving me a bleedin’ fortune.”
“Thanks for that,” Healy smiled. “That sounds like a compliment.”
“So are they playing, The Smiths?” Hughes pressed.
“Erm, no,” Kennedy said with finality. “There aren’t any Smiths gigs till the end of the month. But if you like music, and you’re partial to a bit of New Order or Joy Division, then A Certain Ratio are playing at the Haçienda tonight, and I can possibly, possibly, sort out tickets if that’s what you’re after.”
“What do they look like?” Hughes queried.
“Nazis,” Kennedy responded.
Sugden tutted.
Healy raised his hand to catch the attention of McTell: “I’ll be off, pal” he winked. “Giz a ring if you need me for anything.”
Healy picked up his motorcycle crash helmet and rucksack that were resting by his feet and stepped into his leathers by the bar. While retrieving his bike keys from the rucksack’s front pocket, Pivaro stealthily approached and, with a conspiratorial shrug, passed a note into Healy’s hand.
“I’m not planning on supping pints in the Rovers for ever,” Pivaro whispered. I’m available, even for small roles. That German programme’ll do for me.”
“Got you,” Healy winked, and buried the slip of paper into his jeans pocket. “I’ll pass on the message. As far as I’m aware, nothing’s been mentioned of a second series.”
“I don’t just play untrustworthy Mancs,” Pivaro affirmed. “I could be a roofer from Bolton!”
Kennedy, spotting the moment, quickly approached and placed a hand on Pivaro’s shoulder: “You wouldn’t think it, but Piv is RADA trained. He’s great with big words – he can even spell ‘soliloquy’ without checking a dictionary.”
“Thanks, mate,” Pivaro replied with a frozen smile.
As Healy left the chaotic scene, a seated Pat Phoenix at the bar eyed Healy’s movements with deep suspicion. “I’m not on drugs,” she growled loudly in his direction, “if that’s what you’re thinking. Eh, I’m speaking to you! Eh! Where you bloody off to? Ringing the police or something? Don’t you walk away from me! Eh! Eh!”
Healy span round with bulging eyes and furious mouth, “I’m off home to Newcastle to watch the snooker, if IT’S ORKEE WITH YOU, PET!”