Brian Hoggatt was an old colleague of Ken Barlow’s who had worked in Jamaica for three years. Ken asked him to visit himself and Val at 14 Coronation Street as Ken had had an offer to work in that country and wanted to hear some first-hand experiences of the place.
Brian told them that he had been in Kingston, not Montego Bay which was one of the most beautiful places in the world, even if it was full of millionaires. Val countered his rapturous descriptions by asking why he had come back and he replied that it was because his wife Margaret had fallen ill. His wife had since died and he couldn’t bring up his three children in Jamaica without his mother-in-law. The interesting descriptions over, he started a long lecture about the history of Jamaica which Val possibly found less than enthralling.