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Plot[]

Maggie tells Elsie that Hilda is gossiping about Alan. Ernie sweet talks Annie into singing There'll Always Be an England at the 1940s night. Hilda tells Elsie she was sacked because she knew too much about Alan and Rita. Norma excitedly tells Emily that she won't be alone this Christmas. Ken is annoyed when Emily congratulates him and Norma. He meets Norma and reads her the full-length poem:

To talk with you, to walk, your hand in mine,
Through well remembered woods,
And watch the sunlight searching through the trees,
To find Your eyes,
Such are the pleasures of my life.
To be with you, to feel your thoughts unspoken meet with mine,
And lead our lips and eager hands to mutual delights,
These are my pleasures too.
But doubts arise, to miss those woods and cloud those eyes,
For without love all pleasures die,
And soon the last remaining pleasure is goodbye.

Norma realises it's over. They agree to be friends but Norma breaks down in the ginnel, unaware that Jerry has seen her. Elsie decides to ask Rita what's going on. Norma tells Emily she was joking about her and Ken. Rita tells Elsie there's nothing between Alan and her - it's the booze she's got to worry about.

Cast[]

Regular cast[]

Guest cast[]

None

Places[]

Notes[]

  • This was the first episode to feature the ginnel and yards of Coronation Street as part of the outdoor Grape Street set. Building had taken place after the ginnel's previous appearance in Episode 1207 (9th August 1972), where it was constructed in studio. The scene in which it appeared was OB recorded.
  • The poem Ken Barlow reads to Norma Ford in this episode was hurriedly written by executive producer H.V. Kershaw after a search by the writing team for a romantic poem with a sting in the tale proved fruitless. After transmission, the programme received several letters from viewers asking about the source of the poem, and to avoid disappointing them Kershaw replied that the lines had been written by John Graham, an obscure Scottish poet who had lived in Edinburgh at the turn of the eighteenth century and who had died, tragically, at the age of twenty-three (The Street Where I Live, Panther Books, 1985).
  • TV Times synopsis: In which Elsie hears about her husband - from Rita!
  • Viewing Figures: First UK broadcast - 7,122,000 homes (8th place).
December 1972 episodes
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