Anne Cunningham ( Linda Cheveski nee Tanner 1960-1968, 1984 ): Everyone spoke standard English in television plays in those days, but Granada was ahead of its time and there was this sort of northern vogue. Abbott, who declines to name the leak, was a wide-eyed 24-year-old when he got a script-editing job on the Street, years before he created Touching Evil, State of Play and Shameless.

Antony Cotton: I used to have lunch once a month with Tony at the Midland hotel and he’d tell me about these amazing women he’d written for and who they were based on. And there were the old battle axes he’d grown up with, but a lot of it was the men who’d been on the scene in the 50s and 60s. Sally Ann Matthews: This whole year has proved how important Coronation Street still is. I’m a huge telly addict and love to binge, but this year we’ve all been at home so much, with so much choice, and in such a stressful world it’s reassuring to turn on the TV and know that Corrie is still there. Coronation Street has been working on Ryan's storyline with guidance from The Katie Piper Foundation and Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI) , which both offer help and support to real-life survivors. Iain MacLeod: We don’t have Netflix budgets and nor should we. We should carry on focusing on character and story and being relevant to what’s going on outside people’s front windows.Antony Cotton (Sean Tully 2003-present ): My part didn’t exist until I wrote to the then producer Tony Wood. I found a blank card with a picture of a dog with sunglasses on it, and wrote: “Dear Tony, if you ever fancy having a homosexual skipping down the cobbles of Coronation Street, I’m your man. I’ve got my house, my own car, I don’t do drugs and best of all I’m cheap. Come on Tony, you know you want it.”

Roache, whom Warren had spotted on stage, is the only member of the original cast still in the show. He has starred in more than 4,600 episodes, and had multiple relationships – most famously with his on-screen wife Deirdre (played by the late Anne Kirkbride ). John Finch (writer then producer 1961-1970): The key to everything was Tony Warren’s characters. Nobody, including myself, ever matched his characterisation. But I think he soon got tired and faded away when other writers took over his characters. I think it hurt him.Philip Lowrie: We all became very good friends. I remember Margot Bryant [who played Minnie Caldwell] sitting in the rehearsal rooms doing a bit of knitting. She had a mouth on her – she was one of the rudest women and could tell a story like nobody. Her sister Joan had danced with Fred Astaire. My happiest memory was the first day when through the double doors came the most beautiful girl I think I ever saw. It was Anne, who played my sister Linda. He passed the card to Tony Warren at a long-term story conference. He said: ‘What do you think of having this gay character?’ And Warren – and I’m not making this up – said: ‘Well, if we do there’s only one queen I want to play him and it’s Antony Cotton.” Then he opened the card. He’d seen me in Queer as Folk. From the very beginning, the class snobbery that Warren fought against in 1960 has hung over the mythical squares, closes and streets of Britain’s soaps.

Critics were divided. The Daily Mirror columnist Ken Irwin said the show was “doomed from the outset”. Mary Crozier of the Guardian was more positive, writing: “Mr Warren has pinpointed phrase and accent, humour and oddity, and if he can keep the mixture sharp and not put in too much treacle, it should cook up very well.” The Battersbys had been trailed as “the family from hell”, with Danson cast as a wild child. Audiences hated them so much that 97% of people in a Teletext poll voted to have them evicted. Meanwhile, in 2001, a homicidal businessman delivered Weatherfield’s next dose of stop-everything drama. Richard Hillman ’s two-year reign of terror ended with the abduction of his wife Gail Platt (one of Platt’s six marriages on the Street) and her children in the family car. Almost 20 million people watched as Hillman drove into a canal in a murder-suicide attempt (the family escaped; Hillman died). William Roache: The fact there isn’t a tight community on the Street today reflects the fact you don’t get streets like that any more.It's been almost 70 years since the UK and Commonwealth have seen the crowning of a monarch, so King Charles III's coronation ceremony on Saturday 6 May is set to be a much anticipated and celebrated event. There's a bank holiday weekend planned to celebrate the King taking the throne and we can expect it to be a once-in-a-generation event.

Archie Street, which Warren had used as the visual inspiration for Coronation Street, was demolished in 1971 as part of the postwar urban clearances in Salford. Katy Roberts, Head of Merch and Shops Delivery at Coronation Street, expressed excitement over the "retro" inspired range: "We are thrilled to be collaborating with Joanie on this retro Coronation Street clothing collection.Antony Cotton: When Sean burst on to the street there wasn’t a character like him. People said it was a stereotype, like John Inman in Are You Being Served?. But for me he wasn’t a stereotype – he was an archetype that a lot of people hadn’t seen. Now they all work so hard they don’t even have time to sit – they just lean if they get a break. I bought chairs for them all when I left but I don’t suppose they get much use. I asked Sue Nicholls [Audrey Roberts] out for dinner one evening and she looked and me and said, ‘Out?! I’ve got to learn me lines.’ Warren, who was 23, was allowed to write 12 episodes – plus a finale in case they bombed. His work stunned the script editor Harry Kershaw, who wrote later: “You closed your eyes and you could see the antimacassars and the chenille tablecloths … You sniffed and you could smell the burning sausages and the cheap hairspray and the tang of bitter beer.” Alison Sinclair: I was pregnant with twins when the phone went, and it was this guy saying he was calling from Downing Street. He wanted a preview of the Deirdre plot. I just laughed. I thought it was a radio station prank, but the prime minister wanted to be briefed.