Betty Williams: Soap Babe of the Month

The reason that Coronation Street is so compelling is that the writers have been very skillful over the years at creating the impression that it all could be REAL. It isn't, of course. Life usually just isn't that interesting or dramatic. Think of some semi-recent story-lines, the Fraser Henderson saga, Ken Barlow as a male escort, Don Brennan setting fire to the factory then kidnapping Alma or the Zoe/Mallet baby story and the subsequent cult plot. Think back further to Elsie and her amazingly glamourous wardrobe or to Bet Lynch and her over the top pantomime dame persona.

But still, in spite of all this, when I chat with people about why we like Corrie so much, we usually come to the same conclusions, because it's so true to life, because it's so comfortable, because it's so "ordinary". How on Earth can we think that? How do they manage to create those rating-grabbing plots like Dierdre's trial and stay in prison and still create an impression of realism?

Betty Williams.

Life in Coronation Street has always revolved around The Rovers and the people who work in it, and there behind the bar for the last 30 years has been Betty, grumpy, cheerful, sarcastic and sympathetic. Take her as you find her, she has no airs or graces and can't stick those who do. Landlords come and go, exciting new characters are introduced with a flourish and then disappear, marriages begin and end and just lately, every two months or so, a mentally unbalanced stranger appears to disrupt the lives of everyone in The Street. And through it all, Betty endures. Thirty years of serving ale and hotpots. She is a link to the glory days of Annie Walker and Hilda Ogden. For goodness sake, she was with a young Bet in Annie's Rover the day Fred Gee drove it into the lake.

Betty Williams is as real to me as anyone I know. Nothing much ever happens to her, but then again, nothing much ever happens to most people I know. Small triumphs and small tragedies. Thankfully, the writers have just let her be and have resisted the temptaion to either kill her off or to play God with her.

SALT, PEPPER AND SAUCE

The Street has always been built around well established, deep, rich, rock solid characters that let us all imagine that the programme is character based rather than plot driven. The type that when you see them, you don't think here we go, time for a comedic set piece or a bit of schtick or some new melodramatic complication. And I'm afraid that there are less and less of them these days. There's Betty, Jack, Vera, Gary and maybe Ken, who seems to have been settling into that role lately. Perhaps if the writers let him, Tyrone might one day be added to the list.

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