Charlie Pickering

Charlie Pickering was a slightly cheeky schoolboy at Bessie Street School when Ken Barlow was made Deputy Head there in January 1972. He asked Ken in the corridor if he was as old as thirty. Ken replied with a grin that he was just twenty-one. At the end of the day, he asked Terry Bates why Ken had asked him to stay behind for a moment and Terry told “Pickleface” that it was to give him a note to take home to his mother. Terry opened the note to see what it said and was nervous that Ken was asking Mrs Bates to come into the school and see him - Mrs Bates was, in reality, none other than Rita Littlewood.