Frank Townsend

Frank Townsend was a schoolboy who along with his friends, Peter Jackson and Roy Bradley, came carol singing at the Vestry one evening in December 1965 and appalled Ena Sharples when they liberally massacred Hark! The Herald Angels Sing outside her door. Hearing they were from Bessie Street, she invited them inside where she was sitting with Minnie Caldwell and asked their names. As Frank was obviously of Asian descent, she asked him where he'd been born and was told Stockport Road. Trying again, she asked where his father had been born and was told Burnley. Complaining that she couldn't get a straight answer out of him, she gave up.

She then took the three lads through Once in Royal David's City but stopped them when they started to race through the tune, telling them it wasn't a Boogie-woogie and making them join her at her harmonium to sing the carol properly.

Meanwhile, Stan Ogden was commiserating in the Rovers that the lads had "murdered" Good King Wenceslas and yet Hilda had still given them "half a dollar" i.e. Half a crown or twelve and a half pence in post-decimal money.


 * The character wasn't credited, either on screen or in "TV Times" and the identity of the child actor playing him is unknown.