Mavis Sidlow

Mavis Sidlow worked for Charm Cosmetics, selling door-to-door in Weatherfield. Elsie Howard was her area supervisor and in January 1971 Elsie was summoned to see her boss, Dawn Painter, in her Manchester office.

The steely Mrs Painter told Elsie that she had been going through her returns for December and Mavis Sidlow had not sold anything. Elsie replied that she had been to her house four times but was unable to get a reply. Mrs Painter ordered her to get on top of matters and find out what was wrong.

Elsie asked Mrs Sidlow to come to 11 Coronation Street where she told her that she had not been feeling too well and her widowed mother who lived just outside of Liverpool had also been ill. She had then had her own breakdown after her husband left her six weeks before. She asked for a couple of weeks to sort herself out and a sympathetic Elsie agreed to plead her case.

Mrs Painter cared less about Mavis's problems, saying that Head Office didn’t supply time and Mrs Sidlow wanted two weeks. Nevertheless she agreed to the request which Elsie quickly passed on, telling Mavis that the best thing she could do was to stop feeling sorry for herself and crack on. However another meeting between Elsie and Mrs Painter later that day grew rancorous until finally the imperious sales director grew tired of hearing about Mavis and told Elsie to sack her immediately. When she promptly refused, Elsie was herself fired.

Later on that day, Mrs Sidlow called back at No. 11 where Elsie was furious to find that her story was a near-fiction: she confessed that her husband had left her a year ago and she had a boyfriend, Lionel, happily living with her. She had lied to make things look bad for sympathy. Elsie threatened her with the contents of a hot teapot and chased her out of the house.