The moment the idea for Coronation Street was conceived is immortalised in a new ITV campaign to mark the soap’s 60th anniversary.
Created by ITV Creative, the broadcaster’s in-house creative agency and directed by Dee Koppang O’Leary (The Crown, Bridgerton), the campaign recalls a conversation between the show’s creator Tony Warren, then a young Salford writer, and BBC producer Olive Shapley on a train from King’s Cross to Manchester.
It shows Warren – played by the latest recipient of the Tony Warren Bursary, Harry Chalmers Morris – waking Shapley in the early hours to announce he had a great idea for a show about “ordinary people on an ordinary street”.
Shapley, who had subsequently recounted the moment on a ‘This Is Your Life’ for Warren, responded to Warren’s suggestion with “how boring” and “to go back to sleep!”
