She first appeared in Weatherfield as a slip of a thing with a shoulder-length bob and three lines to say. Forty-two years later she was still on the cobbles, though with a middle-aged crop. Anne Kirkbride, who died last week, created an exceptional character.
Deirdre did not fit into any of the major Corrie categories: she was not entirely sex bomb, matriarch or termagant. She often seemed just to be getting on with her life alongside ours. Yet she was utterly distinctive. She was also at the centre of the most galvanising and adored storylines. Four weddings, three husbands and a prison sentence.
Her famous specs were a stroke of genius. What other soap character has worn glasses and had sex? At times Deirdre’s lenses were so big that they were comic, like two telly screens on her face. They definitely had a genetic basis: one of the show’s best jokes was to give her mother, Blanche, a version of the same frames. One of the show’s best tributes would be to pop a pair on the nose of Deirdre’s daughter, the beautiful, swivel-eyed Tracy. The specs also hinted that she might read a book or two: that she was, in fact, destined to be tied to Ken Barlow, the only man known to return to the Rovers from the far-off land of Higher Education.
Deirdre and Ken’s first trip to the altar, in 1981, attracted more viewers than the wedding of Charles and Diana. Their second coincided almost exactly with Charles’s marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles. It was an inspired coupling. Kirkbride’s marvellous voice, deep and crackling, hinted that Deirdre was sexually voracious. As did her explosiveness. Ken fired her up. He also faintly bored her. She was, after all, both capable and tremendously droned at. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before,” Deirdre says to Liz McDonald as they sit smoking in her kitchen while Ken expatiates. “Not listening.”
The most public of her storylines was imprisonment (she was scammed by a conman). Even Tony Blair rallied to the “free the Weatherfield one” campaign. The most tragic was the death of her Moroccan husband Samir Rachid. The best was the love-triangle of Deirdre, Ken and Mike Baldwin. In finest Corrie tradition, it had been smouldering for years. When the final agony, enacted round the jamb of a door, was over, the result was announced at Old Trafford at a Man United-Arsenal game: “Ken 1 – Mike 0”. The crowd cheered.
Deirdre was surrounded by gloom-mongers. Her mother (“cold or fried luncheon-meat?”) warned her early on that a broken engagement was only the first of many. Yet Kirkbride was gutsy. Her final appearance on Coronation Street was exemplary. The Barlows are in dire straits: Peter in prison; Ken looking as if he were modelling a knitting pattern; Tracy like a harpie. And Deirdre’s trifle has gone wrong. As large accusations fly, Deirdre wails: “Jelly shouldn’t run. It should wobble.” She lobs the dish of trifle at the wall. Everybody ducks.
