Episode 771 (6th May 1968)

Plot[]

Part One: Len tries to reason with Reg Barton but he refuses to budge. Ronald Wilde turns up and tells Len to get Stan off the site. Len refuses, so Wilde calls a union meeting in the Rovers. Lucille warns Shirley off Ray but they step back from a catfight when Maggie steps in. A clueless Hilda tells one of the labourers she sympathises with their problem, thinking that Ray is the cause. The meeting begins and Reg makes a speech castigating Stan without naming him. Jerry replies on behalf of the yard while Len tries to keep his temper. Hilda suddenly realises Stan is the subject under discussion and erupts in anger when Reg calls her husband useless and incompetent. She has to be dragged out by Stan. Wilde orders both sides to sort the matter out by 2.00pm. Lucille asks Gordon to help her with the Gamma Garments accounts. He agrees, much to Maggie's disapproval. Gordon loses his temper when Les pushes in to help and he asks Lucille to call back later. Elsie fears that Dennis has stolen the money.

Part Two: Fancying Val, Ray shows her drawings of the maisonettes' interiors. She tells him she views his previous behaviour over Lucille as a mistake. Wilde threatens to blacken the yard and Jerry realises they have no choice but to take Stan off the job. Elsie questions Jenny about what she knows of Dennis's finances. He returns with a zircon ring for Jenny. Ken doesn't believe Ray has changed. Ray bumps into Lucille for the first time since his return and she makes it clear she wants nothing to do with him. The regulars celebrate when Dennis and Jenny announce they're putting up the banns. Stan won't drink in the Rovers with Len and Jerry. Ray easily charms Annie and Lucille is annoyed when she speaks up for him. Stan returns drunk from another pub and Len finds him staggering outside the corner shop. Mr Stevenson, Dennis's boss, calls at No.11 and leaves a message with a worried Elsie for her son to report to the office tomorrow. Maggie and Gordon worry where Les has got to. He returns drunk and throws his empty bottle through the shop window.

Cast[]

Regular cast[]

Guest cast[]

Places[]

Coronation Street
Rovers Return Inn - Public
9 Coronation Street - Back room and hallway
11 Coronation Street - Back room and hallway
Corner Shop - Shop and back room
Maisonettes - Building site and flat interior

Notes[]

George Waring makes a pre-Arnold Swain appearance as Ronald Wilde. In his OB scene, the actor gets out of his car which then begins to move forward as the brakes haven't been applied properly. Someone off camera shouts "car!" and Waring puts his hand on the vehicle to steady it. As the car was now stationary, the scene seems to have continued without a reshoot.
This episode includes a flashback from Episode 5 transmitted on 23rd December 1960, as Elsie Tanner recalls a previous confrontation with Dennis over an unexplained windfall.
The scenes on the Grape Street set were OB recorded.
Irene Sutcliffe was credited as Maggie Clegg from this episode onwards instead of the more formal "Margaret Clegg" with which she had been introduced.
Director and future producer Bill Podmore had cause to remember this episode as he recounted in his 1990 memoir Coronation Street: The Inside Story as he recounted the latest and most serious incident caused by Peter Adamson's growing problem with alcohol during the scene of the union meeting in the Rovers:

"It was...a very important scene and Peter, true to recent form, was drunk. In fact he was so sloshed he had the greatest difficulty in delivering the lines at all. This wasn't a rehearsal which could be abandoned...it was a recording day. The camera crews, lighting technicians, sound men, actors, extras and Uncle Tom Cobley were waiting to shoot the scene. We had no alternative but to struggle on. Peter didn't look too bad in the wide-angle shots, where the camera was peering over the shoulders of the assembled strikers. He was just swaying gently backwards and forwards; with a little clever camera work we might have got away with that. But in close up we could never hide a face which looked leeringly on the wrong side of a bottle of Scotch. Peter could hardly speak, never mind put up a convincing argument, which made it all but impossible for his sparring partner in the verbal battle to play his part either. Without crisp timing, the whole scene fell apart. We shot as much as we could and then set a bleak and unique precedent for Coronation Street. For the first time in circumstances other than a complete technical breakdown, we had to go back into studio the following week, position all the actors and extras on exactly the same spots as before, reshoot the close-ups, and tape the words of a thankfully sober Peter Adamson. With a little help from the backroom boys of the video editing suite, we stitched the tape clips together, and somehow conjured up the latest in a long line of Len Fairclough cover ups. It must have looked a lot better than I anticipated. Doris Speed telephoned with a welcome pat on the back: 'what a wonderful piece of surgery, dear boy.' "

Peter Adamson appears in two other studio scenes in the episode but his lines are minimal and it is not known if these were also re-staged the following week. It should be noted that it was only due to a week of double-banking episodes 765 to 768 earlier in the year that the programme schedule was ahead, and a re-shoot was possible on this occasion.
In a formatting error in the end credits. Geoffrey Reed's name is credited in lower case whereas all of the other actors are in upper case.
TV Times synopsis: Dennis in money trouble
Viewing Figures: First UK broadcast - 8,050,000 homes (2nd place).

May 1968 episodes
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