Vera has been the centre of so many great stories. Photograph: Granada Television
Spoiler ... beware, this post reveals the 'well kept secret' of tonight's Corrie plot
I can only begin this post by claiming a personal interest - my dad is Jack Duckworth. His name might not actually be Jack Duckworth (it's Eric) but that's the only real point of difference. He even - honestly - lives on Coronation Street (in Barnsley). I may have moved to the bright lights of Camden Town but whenever I see his on-screen doppelganger I'm transported straight back to the streets of northern England. And there's a big part of me that loves to travel in this style.
Today Jack Duckworth loses his wife, Vera. This has affected me in ways that have surprised me. I'm saddened to hear about actress Liz Dawn's emphysema and also to see the demise of one of the great characters not just of Coronation Street but also of English culture. With a life of heartbreak, pathos, humour and temper, stymied by class and the grind of the working week, Vera is Little Britain without the laugh track. Had Alan Bennett created her, he would surely have considered it a good day's work.
In her 34 years on England's most famous street, Vera has been the centre of so many great stories that it's difficult to know where to begin. There was the time she believed herself to be the second cousin once removed of King Edward II. Or when her dreams came true and she and Jack became landlady and landlord of the Rovers Return. It couldn't last, though. For Vera, it never does.
My favourite moment came when another Rovers landlady, Bet Lynch, saw Jack advertising himself on a dating agency's videotape under the pseudonym Vince St Clair. Informed of this, Vera disguised herself and met "Vince" (sporting a gold medallion, dressed in a white suit) for a date in the pub. In my mind the sight of her clattering him out of the Rovers' door is a piece of comedy genius to compare with the Trotters dropping a priceless chandelier to the floor in Only Fools and Horses.
People look down on soap operas and most of the time they're right, but the writers and actors of Coronation Street have managed to attain and maintain a form that is often beyond compare. Its incidental magic, things that mean nothing and everything, are like the fiction of Tom Wolfe or John Travolta's speech about French Burger Kings in Pulp Fiction. Each week Vera drops lines as if they were no more than cigarette ash, when in fact many of them are of such quality that any writer would be proud to have written them.
This is why people feel they know her and why people will miss her. This is why I'm dreading her death and why I feel as if I'm about to attend a funeral.
