When Helen Worth joined the cast of Coronation Street in 1974, the ITV soap opera was reaching up to 8 million British households per night. As her character, the redoubtable Gail Chadwick (who, in true soap fashion, was also known at various points in time as Gail Potter, Tilsley, Platt, Hillman, McIntyre and Rodwell) evolved, so the programme’s viewing figures grew. By the 1980s, Gail and co were regularly finding 20 million viewers entranced by the drama on the cobbles. Soap operas ruled the airwaves.
That was the first of Worth’s five decades on the show, which came to an end last month as the well-coiffed doyenne of Weatherfield bid a final farewell on Christmas Day. It feels like the end of an era. Worth is but the highest-profile exit in a raft of recent departures – from Colson Smith’s Craig Tinker to Charlotte Jordan’s Daisy Midgeley – that have sparked rumours of a show in crisis, as dwindling enthusiasm has been coupled with industrial turmoil and budget cuts.
