{"id":662587,"date":"2026-06-28T10:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/662587\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:29:13","slug":"coronation-streets-child-star-creator-tried-to-create-another-soap-and-fans-will-be-familiar-with-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/662587\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronation Street’s child star creator tried to create another soap, and fans will be familiar with its name"},"content":{"rendered":"

He may be famed for bringing Coronation Street<\/a> into our lives, but some may not know that the beloved Manchester institution wasn’t Tony Warren’s first idea.<\/p>\n

Actually born Anthony McVay Simpson in Eccles<\/a>, Warren adopted his stage name in his early acting career. As a child, he trained at the Elliott-Clarke Theatre School in Liverpool, and soon became a regular on the BBC<\/a> Radio Children\u2019s Hour.<\/p>\n

It’s here that he acted in many radio plays, performing alongside many of the people who later became household names through the ITV soap, including Violet Carson and Doris Speed, who played Ena Sharples and Annie Walker.<\/p>\n

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It wasn’t until his twenties that the idea for Florizel Street, later renamed Coronation Street, came to him late one night in 1959, as he returned to Manchester by train. According to BBC producer Olive Shapley, he woke her up saying: “Olive, I\u2019ve got this wonderful idea for a television series.<\/p>\n

“I can see a little back street in Salford<\/a>, with a pub at one end and a shop at the other, and all the lives of the people there, just ordinary things and…” Olive told him that the idea was boring and to go back to sleep.<\/p>\n

But in 1960, Granada commissioned a script. Warren trawled the streets of Salford to find what he thought would be the perfect street upon which to model his creation, eventually choosing Archie Street, which has since been demolished.<\/a><\/p>\n

Warren went on to write the first 13 episodes of the soap, which ITV<\/a> decided to air. He continued to write for Granada Television on a full-time basis until 1968. He remained as a consultant to the show until he passed away, visiting the famous set and meeting the cast and crew during breaks in filming to offer feedback and praise on storylines and performances.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Coronation Street wasn’t Tony Warren’s first idea for a soap(Image: Mirrorpix)<\/p>\n

However, Corrie wasn’t actually Warren’s first attempt at getting a soap off the ground, and the name of his first idea will be familiar to those who follow the ITV soap now.<\/p>\n

He previously started writing Seven, Bessie Street, and Corrie fans will know that Bessie Street is the primary school that is attended by Weatherfield’s youngsters, alongside the secondary school, Weatherfield High.<\/p>\n

Warren’s friend, David Tucker, said Seven, Bessie Street centred on a terraced street but is otherwise very different from Coronation Street. In 2017, the BBC<\/a> reported that the script was found in his possessions after he died and was being shown as part of an exhibition dedicated to Warren at Salford Museum and Art Gallery.<\/p>\n

According to the publication, Warren left his estate to Mr Tucker, a friend of 22 years, with an instruction to destroy all creative works that weren’t already in the public domain. However, he decided to keep the Seven, Bessie Street, with the proviso that no one else could read it. Mr Tucker, however, had read it, and said it was “quite obviously planned as a soap opera”.<\/p>\n

When he didn’t get any joy with Seven, Bessie Street, Warren pitched a drama titled Our Street to the BBC. But he didn’t hear back, so he reworked it as Florizel Street for Granada, which, as mentioned, later became Coronation Street.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Warren adopted his stage name in his early acting career(Image: PA)<\/p>\n

When Warren died in March 2016, at the age of 79, following a short illness, William Roache, who had worked with Tony since Corrie’s first episode aired, having been cast in the role of Ken Barlow, said: \u201cWhen I first met Tony I couldn\u2019t quite believe he\u2019d created and written Coronation Street because he was no more than a young boy.<\/p>\n

“It was his boyish energy, even recently when I saw him again, that I\u2019ll remember. I loved Tony\u2019s energy. He was the father of Coronation Street and he gave us all so much. He will be so desperately missed because of who he was and what he did. We owe him so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Corrie actress Helen Worth, who is famed for having played Gail Platt, worked with Tony for 42 years and commented: “Tony was a genius of our time, the dearest, funniest and most inspirational man of his generation. He brought real life into our homes for us all to relate to and enjoy. He will, of course, live on forever through Coronation Street.”<\/p>\n

Corrie wasn’t Warren’s only work. He devised the Gerry And The Pacemakers film Ferry Cross The Mersey and wrote the ITV series The War Of Darkie Pilbeam, a trilogy of plays about civilian life in Britain during the Second World War. He also penned several novels in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

He received a number of accolades throughout his career, including the Royal Television Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 on Coronation Street’s 50th anniversary. He was also made an MBE in 1994 for his services to television drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He may be famed for bringing Coronation Street into our lives, but some may not know that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2525,96,347,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-662587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-coronation-street","tag-entertainment","tag-itv","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}