Charlie Pickering was a slightly cheeky schoolboy at Bessie Street School when Ken Barlow was made Deputy Head there in January 1972.
When watching a slideshow on the First World War that Ken presented, he told him that his own grandfather was in that conflict and asked why it was called the "Great War" and if it was so bad, why his grandad always talked about it.
He later 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.
- The character was only named in his penultimate appearance.
List of appearances[]
1972