Template:60Years 1963

 ~ 1963 ~ In May, Coronation Street's former casting director Margaret Morris became its first female producer, replacing H.V. Kershaw. Kershaw continued to write for the programme and eventually committed to further stints as producer. Under Morris, Coronation Street adopted a darker tone, tackling a number of hard-hitting storylines. For Sheila Birtles's exit, Morris and the writers took Sheila to her lowest ebb, sacked from Elliston's Raincoat Factory and badly treated by her boyfriend Neil Crossley, with a tragic ending planned in which Sheila attempted suicide. Eileen Mayers recorded Sheila's suicide scene, in which the character was seen trying to take an overdose and then, after failing and vomiting into a wastebin, gassing herself. Before transmission, news of the storyline leaked and Granada was inundated with complaints, notably from the Deputy Manchester City Coroner Roderick Davies who accused the network of removing the stigma from suicide. Morris - who had issued a statement defending the storyline as being true-to-life - was ordered by Sidney and Cecil Bernstein not to transmit the ending of the episode to omit the suicide attempt. In the eventually broadcast scene, Sheila only swallowed two aspirins before the episode was faded out and she become catatonic, remaining so until her rescue by Dennis Tanner, Len Fairclough and Walter Potts in the next episode.  ''To celebrate 60 years of Coronation Street on television, we're going through the programme's entire history a year at a time. The full version of this article can be found here. Check back on 29th January for 1964!''