Coronation Street star Bill Roache, who plays Ken Barlow, has revealed Tony Warren, who created the show, had some interesting methods.
Bill said that Tony used to get ideas for names of characters by wandering around graveyards and taking a look at the names marked on gravestones.
"I remember him telling me when he needed family names he used to walk around the graveyards to get the names from there," said Bill.
"But he was always bubbling over with ideas and energy. Just a lovely man to be with."
Bill called Tony, who died in March 2016, aged 79, "an incredible man".
"After a while he sort of drifted away, but he was always interesting to talk to," he said.
"If you talked to him about any subject he would sort of widen it out into something different."
Tony struggled to get the programme made as his initial pitch for a show about a Salford back street was rejected by Granada Television’s founder Sidney Bernstein.
Producer Harry Elton eventually persuaded Sidney to commission 13 plot episodes, and the rest was history,
"And of course, as a young man he had to fight all the feelings against doing something like this," Bill explained.
"I think the Bernsteins felt people wanted escapism, and they didn't want this realism coming in.
"Tony was the first one."
But 60 years on, the soap is currently the most watched on TV, with an average audience of eight million a week.
* Coronation Street airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7.30pm and 8.30pm on ITV
