Tolstoy, Hutchwright & Barlow

Please note that this post makes reference to the May 25th episode on CBC.

Where better to start than with Ken Barlow, the last remaining original cast member and, it turns out, a budding author. The year was 1960. Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe at the United Nations. Elvis Presley returns home from Germany after military service. Hugh Grant is born and winks at the nurse in the delivery room. Meanwhile, young Ken was writing the Great British Novel... presumably in the Rovers.

How did that novel start? We can only guess. But I'm betting it went something like,
It was the best of pints, it was the worst of pints. Or maybe it was a more sensuous tome, How do I love Annie Walker, let me count the ways? Or perhaps it simply grabbed the reader's attention with a hearty Call me Kenneth .

Then again, maybe it was a murder mystery based on the unfortunate death of an interfering, crotchety mother-in-law at the hands of a beleaguered university-educated teacher reduced to scraping plates at Roy's Rolls. At this point, we can only speculate. And where has he been hiding this magnum opus all these years? (The attic) Will it be published? (Maybe in the Weatherfield Gazette). If we get really lucky, perhaps 'marvellous' Mel Hutchwright (author of 'Hard Grindings' and esteemed scam artist) will come back to Coronation Street and give Ken some valuable pointers -- in exchange for a small fee and a few drinks of course.