Doris Speed MBE
Doris Speed MBE
Played: Annie Walker (9 December 1960 - 12 October 1983)
Like many of the early Coronation Street stars, Doris was an old trouper, having trod the boards all her life. She was experienced in stage, television and radio long before the Street. Tony Warren had always intended Doris to play the role of Annie Walker after working with her some years before on Children's Hour, but she still had to audition, and some reports say she was the 58th candidate !
Doris soon put her own indeliable mark on the role, and younger actors still talk in awe and fear of Doris' presence on the set. She lived quietly in a Manchester semi-detached house with her mother, who died aged 97 in the early 1970's.
In October 1983, Doris was admitted to hospital, and shortly afterwards the Daily Mirror revealed that she was not 69 as she claimed, but 84. Soon after this her house was ransacked whilst she was upstairs in bed and the shock of all this forced her to retire from the Street and move into a nursing home in Bury. Happily, Doris was to live for another 10 years before passing away in her sleep, aged 95.
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