I wonder, sometimes, if Katherine Kelly misses her days as Becky McDonald in Coronation Street. Yes, Becky was a once-homeless, thieving ex-con who worked her way through the full panoply of soap storylines (abuse, miscarriage, drink problem, buying a child, marrying Steve, smashing up Tracy Barlow’s front room with a sledgehammer, a stint in the Rovers Return) before her departure from the cobbled streets for a new life in Barbados after a triumphant wedding-reception-wrecking, but, y’know, she got to have a laugh while she was doing it.
This was during the early 00s, when Coronation Street still dealt in comedy as well as tragedy, recognising them as two sides of the same life coin, especially among the barmaids – fully formed or embryonic battleaxes all – gazing out on the world and its punters as they wearily pulled pints behind the bar.
