Jean Alexander: Coronation Street ‘Not the same as it used to be’
Actress Jean Alexander who played Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street has said the Granada soap is ‘not the same as it used to be’.
The actress discussed the soap and her role as Hilda Ogden, which she played for over 20 years, in an interview with the BBC. Alexander bowed out of Coronation Street in 1987 and the following year joined the cast of the BBC One comedy Last of the Summer Wine as Auntie Wainwright (pictured below). Although, over the years, she has been asked to return to Corrie several times she has always declined (apart from a 1990’s video The Women of Coronation Street which she did record new material for).
As the soap celebrates its 50th anniversary this week with a tram-crash and a live episode tonight the actress reveals that she occasionally watches Corrie but feels it is ‘not the same as it used to be’.
“It hasn’t got the character that it used to have. It’s lost its identity somehow for me. You look at all the people in it – the young people in it particularly – and hardly any of them have got a job and those who have are only being paid in buttons. And yet you never see them in the same clothes twice running. They’ve got all the latest fashions, the make-up, the hairdos, all this. Poor Hilda could only get a pinny off the market every once in a while. It shouldn’t be like that – it’s too glossy now.” – Jean Alexander speaking to the BBC
It is not the first time that the actress has criticised the soap – even if her criticisms here are quite light. In 2005 the actress spoke out against the ‘emphasis on sex’ within Coronation Street and for dragging some storylines out for longer periods than they used to run when she was part of the cast.
