Isle of Man

The Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. The island has been inhabited since 6500 BC and has its own language, Manx, though only some 1,800 people have varying levels of second language conversational ability. Aside from tourism, its main industries (due to favourable taxation) are insurance, online gambling, information and communications technology, and banking. Aside from air travel, its communications routes are ferries from Liverpool, Heysham, Belfast and Dublin. The capital of the island is Douglas.

In May 1961, Christine Hardman and her new friend and lodger Jean Stark planned a holiday on the island and in October of that same year newly-weds Harry and Concepta Hewitt spent their honeymoon on the island staying in the south-western village of Port Erin. Mavis Riley enjoyed a holiday on the island in September 1977 while just over two years later, in November 1979, Brian and Gail Tilsley became the second couple in Coronation Street to honeymoon there after their wedding in that same month.

In June 1984, Samantha Benson, an old girlfriend of Billy Walker from Jersey stopped off in Weatherfield en-route to a new job on the island to warn Billy that his debtors back in Jersey were after him. In the following June Ivy Tilsley went on a holiday to the island with George Wardle, shocking Brian at the behaviour of his usually strictly catholic mother.

In 1990, Newton & Ridley director Cecil Newton retired to the island, while in June 2007 Ashley and Claire Peacock had a short holiday there.

Background information

 * The only scenes in the programme ever set on the island were in Episode 84 (2nd October 1961) and Episode 85 (4th October 1961) but these were all recorded in Granada Television's Quay Street studios. No location filming has ever taken place for the main programme itself on the island.
 * TV Times took actors Christopher Quinten and Helen Worth to the island in 1979 for an article illustrating Brian and Gail's honeymoon there which appeared in the issue for 15th to 21st December.
 * Actors Kym Marsh, Tupele Dorgu, Katherine Kelly, Jack P. Shepherd and Wendi Peters went to the island in 2008 for the programme Ghosthunting with...Coronation Street