Ken Barlow
|
|
Deirdrekenfight.jpg
Ken Barlow is a character in the long-running British soap opera, Coronation Street. He is the only surviving character from the first episode of the series, back in 1960. He has been a teacher, a newspaper editor, a community activist and most bizarrely of all a trolley-pusher at a supermarket, before returning to teaching and writing. He has been married three times, widowed once, divorced twice, and had twenty-seven girlfriends, including a character played by the now famous actress Joanna Lumley. For some years, following the deaths of his parents, brother and first wife, he lived with his "Uncle Albert", another of the Street's original characters. Albert Tatlock was actually the uncle of Barlow's late wife, Valerie.
William Roache, the actor who has played Barlow throughout, took exception to the public image of the character as "boring", and attempted to redress the balance by persuading the scriptwriters to make him have an affair and leave his wife, Deirdre (Anne Kirkbride). Deirdre was in fact the character's third wife. His first wife, Valerie Tatlock (Anne Reid), electrocuted herself with a faulty hairdryer in 1971. His second wife, Janet Reid (Judith Barker), divorced him and then committed suicide in 1977 when Ken refused to take her back. Deirdre and Ken were married from 1981 to 1990; their divorce caused great personal turmoil for the both of them (culminating in Ken's suicide attempt). The two reconciled and were married in 2005.
Ken has had four children during the street's existence: the twins, daughter (Susan) killed in an accident, and a son (Peter) who returned to live on the street (and was once played by the actor's own son) but has since departed again (after bigamously marrying two women). Another son, Daniel, lives with Ken's ex-girlfriend. Finally, there is Ken's adopted daughter, Tracy (again a street returnee, played by a fourth actress to have the role!), who was his third wife's daughter by her ex-husband, Ray Langton (Neville Buswell).
One of the most-watched episodes of the soap was when Ken discovered Deirdre was having an affair with his great rival, Mike Baldwin, and was planning to leave him. Although she stayed with him on that occasion, he eventually left her for a secretary, but they have been reconciled on several occasions and are currently married. After Deirdre's romance with Baldwin (who had been her boyfriend before she married Ken), Barlow himself formed a relationship with council secretary, Wendy Crozier, and left Deirdre to live with her. While they were apart, he had relationships with numerous women, including the headmistress of the school where he worked, Baldwin's ex-girlfriend, Alma (who later married Mike), and with Maggie Redman, the mother of Baldwin's son, Mark. The latter two affairs both resulted in further antagonism between Ken and Mike.
Despite this record, Ken's on-screen activities have done little to alter the popular image of the character. In the UK, "Ken Barlow" remains a synonym for a boring man.