It’s been 23 years since Coronation Street icon Amanda Barrie last put pen to paper, in a tell-all autobiography that disclosed her sexuality publicly for the first time.
It was something she feared would bring an end to her 15 year stint as Jim’s Café owner Alma Sedgewick, and part of the reason she chose to leave the cobbles behind was to live authentically.
Following the release of her latest book, ‘I’m Still Here – My 90 Years’ – which has been ghost-written by wife Hilary Bonner – Barrie speaks to RadioTimes.com about the struggle she faced while working on the ITV soap, and how the changing face of Weatherfield would “delight” creator Tony Warren.
“In 2000, I gave my notice and said: ‘Kill me!’”, she explains.
“I didn’t want to go back into it. If I was going, I was going. Part of it was that I was a little bit tired of living that life, and not being totally honest with people.
“I found it rather difficult. I was always honest [to friends and family] about being with my husband Robin and then later with Hilary, but I only tasted that side of things in Corrie. I’d have been written out.”
It’s something that Amanda now finds “ironic”, given the show champions diversity both on and off screen.
“I used to say: ‘It’s not catching you know!’, but after I left, I think it sort of is. There’s one in every house down the street.
“It should be called Canal Street (after Manchester’s gay village), because you can’t move for them! So it is catching.”
Prior to becoming a household name and being projected into the living rooms of millions across the country each night, Amanda had an extensive stage career – first pushed into the limelight by her mother at the age of three. A Manchester girl, she formed an early friendship with Tony Warren, both represented by the same agent.
“We were young and ridiculous and he’d come and destroy auditions by saying he could dance and sing – which he couldn’t! He was told off all the time,” she laughs.
“We kept in touch and went for a meal one night in what was a very posh place in Manchester – the French restaurant at The Midland. He asked me if I wanted to go and look at The Street.
“We stood hand in hand on a moonlit night, looking at Coronation Street. Tony said: ‘It’s magic, isn’t it.’ It was a privilege to be stood there with him.
“Tony just so happened to be a trifle gay! Just a tiny, tiny bit. He was the campest of the camp and will be delighted to know the way the street is going the way it is!”
Before her initial early ’80s guest stint in Corrie, she enjoyed a string of television and film roles – including alongside Sid James as last Pharaoh of Egypt Cleopatra in 1964 comedy Carry On Cleo.
But for Amanda’s mother, nothing could quite beat the dizzy heights that the Rovers Return could offer.
“I was only in it for a bit and she was so thrilled. With Corrie, I’d made it! If I’d won an Oscar she wouldn’t have been so pleased.
“She used to ring up [in an accent] saying, ‘Amanda Barrie is the most wonderful thing to happen to your show, you should keep her.’ Then I got a phone call from [producer] Bill Podmore asking me to stop her calling the production office.
“I didn’t come back into it fully until after she had died. She must’ve gone straight up there, knocked on the door and demanded a chat with the producer of Coronation Street!”
The next 12 years would see Alma marry factory owner Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs), be driven into the canal by Don Brennan (Geoff Hinsliff), and eventually succumb to a cervical cancer diagnosis.
“When I was doing it, there was so many inaccuracies about the medical side of things,” she reveals.
“I’ve never had any bad fan mail. It had been put out that I was ‘thrilled to be playing a cancer victim’, and of course I hadn’t said that. This man wrote to me and said, ‘I’m glad you’re thrilled to be playing a cancer victim, my wife has cancer and by the time your story goes out she’ll be dead.’
“I started to get my back up. It was the first and only time I ever did it in my career – I rang up Hilary, as someone I could trust to leak my story. I had to disconnect myself from the writing of the storyline because I didn’t agree with the way it was being done. Hilary did it for me and we’ve been together ever since!”
A recurring guest role in sun-soaked sitcom Benidorm and a residence in the Big Brother house would follow, returning to the stage as part of a Coronation Street live show earlier this year.
“If they do it again, I hope they ask me. The audience were so receptive all the way through.
“I’ve been very lucky, I’ve done a lot of good work in the West End with very good people, but you do Carry On Cleo and Coronation Street and you’re not forgotten.”
Amanda Barrie and wife Hilary Bonner will appear at St Andrew’s Book Festival to discuss their book on Saturday 29th November.
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