William Roache has talked about the alteration Coronation Street made to avoid being cancelled.
The actor, who has portrayed Ken Barlow since the very first episode, was busy discussing the ITV soap in a video message to a fan.
The recipient was a person who no longer watched Coronation Street. William, a soap legend, created the video response on Cameo and said:
‘Well that’s up to you, isn’t it. A show like Coronation Street is so well-established and it has its phases.
‘Sometimes there is a lot of serious stuff, and things like that but Coronation Street really is known for its humour and there’ll be periods – quite long periods – where it will be on the drama side but it changes. It goes through phases like that and I understand a lot of people stop watching Coronation Street.’
The actor went onto reflect on the challenge Coronation Street has of appealing to the long-term fans of the show, as well as the younger, newer ones at the same time.
‘The difficulty the producers have is you’ve got an older generation that’s getting older, there’s a younger generation that’s coming in and you’ve got to keep appealing to the younger generation and that isn’t easy’, he said.
‘You find when you do that, the older generation go “I don’t like the Street. It’s not what it was you know”.’
Pondering over the importance of Coronation Street changing with the times, he explained: ‘If it had remained what it was it would have been a dinosaur and would have died by now. It has to be an organic process, a living thing of drawing in the youngsters.
‘It’s like a cake – a bit for the elderly, the middle-aged, the youngsters…everyone. It will go through phases like that and sometimes it lurches a bit to catering to bringing in the youngsters and the old people don’t like that.
‘Sometimes it lurches to bringing all the oldies in and the youngsters may not like that but it is a tricky thing by and large though the audience stays pretty constant and we do pretty well so I think they do a very good job of steering the good ship Coronation Street so long may that continue.’
This week (March 11), William Roache was issued a deadline from the High Court to pay a tax bill.
William chose to not appear at the specialist hearing on Monday, where HMRC lawyers said the sum has now been reduced due to previous payments.
Jacquille Jarrett, who works for HMRC, said the actor asked for a 12-week adjournment, which was unopposed to ‘allow the sale of property’. Judge Stephen Baister granted the delay, confirming the case will continue in June.
Back in February of this year it was reported that William was now allegedly facing bankruptcy for a second time.
At the time, the High Court papers obtained by The Sun claim he has coughed up just £41,666.65.
The publication also claims fresh details are revealed in the paperwork with the HMRC saying: ‘The debtor is justly and truly indebted to us in the aggregate sum of £546,348.53 being the sum of £588,015.18 claimed in a statutory demand less the sum of £41,666.65 paid since the date of issue of the said demand.'
