Monica Sutton was the sister of Jenny Sutton and sister-in-law of Dennis Tanner. Monica was raised in a family of nine at a fourth-floor flat near Battersea Power Station. Before her sister was married, Monica ran away from her home in London to join Robert Croft's hippy commune up north.
On New Year's Eve 1967, the hippies left their encampment in a house in Union Street and invaded 11 Coronation Street. Elsie Tanner had just emigrated to the USA with her husband Steve so Dennis was living there by himself. Monica was wearing her black wig over her blonde hair when she entered the house with her hippy friends, handing the wig to a confused Dennis as she did so.
Like Robert, Keith, Roy and Vanda, Monica was quiet and placid, spending most of her time thinking, smoking and staring into space. Once Dennis worked out that the hippies meant to stay for a while, he agreed to let them doss, although he didn't integrate with them. Monica was the most spaced-out of the clan, requesting tomato on a chocolate butty from Dennis and spending several minutes silently gazing at it. She also looked after the other members of the group, cutting Roy's hair and massaging Robert's back to cure his neck-ache (although in the former case, she appeared to be more interested in the hair itself, which she said was like rabbit's fur). Lucille Hewitt soon joined their fold and Monica hoped that Dennis would follow, enjoying the notion of everybody living their lifestyle as it would really be the land of a thousand dances.
The hippies were thrown out of No.11 when Annie Walker warned Dennis's landlord Alfred Wormold about the "vagrants" being harboured within his property. Alfred inspected the house for himself and found the hippies all sleeping during the day, having spent the whole night listening to music. Monica gave Wormold a friendly greeting and responded to his notice of eviction by putting her hand on his face and telling him that "all you need is love". Believing that he was being propositioned, Wormold hightailed it out of the house to go express his moral outrage in the Rovers Return. The hippies moved on shortly thereafter.
Just after she arrived at No.11, Monica wrote to Jenny informing her where she was staying and told her that the tenant Dennis Tanner was "a bit square but a nice guy". On the day that Wormold ordered them out, Jenny arrived in Weatherfield and introduced herself to Dennis, coming to like him so much that she remained behind when her sister and the other hippies left.
A few months later, Monica got engaged to a bank manager, and her dad Ernie chose to pay for her wedding over Jenny's. Monica didn't appear at Jenny's and Dennis's wedding on 29th May.