Albert Tatlock
Albert Tatlock
Played by: Jack Howarth
Appeared: 9 December 1960 - 25 January 1984
Pensioner Albert Tatlock was the original occupant of No 1 Coronation Street. He was educated at Bessie Street school and extremely close friends with long-standing Rovers landlady Annie Walker. He was Weatherfield's resident war veteran, having served in the First World War and never tired of reliving famous battles to anybody who would listen. While other people mellowed with age, Albert grew grumpier, sick of the way he was forced to struggle on a pension after fighting for his country. To people who didn't know him that well, he appeared a bitter, miserable old man, but underneath his gruff, rather frightening exterior, he had a good heart. He married his sweetheart Bessie Vickery and the couple had a daughter Beattie, who left Weatherfield soon after she was married and rarely visited her father.
In 1960 Albert retired from his job at the Town Hall just a few months after his wife Bessie had died in her sleep. In 1961 he was delighted when his niece Valerie moved in as a lodger and even more delighted when she married Ken Barlow from number 3. But that happiness was rudely interrupted when Valerie was killed in a fire after being electrocuted by a faulty plug. It was decided that her and Ken's children, twins Susan and Peter, would be better off living in Scotland with Albert's brother Alfred. Albert missed them all dreadfully and as a result became very close to Ken and began to look upon him as his own son.
Although he wasn't slow to criticise and chastise others, Albert was a central character in the Street and held in a great deal of affection by the community. In August 1975, he celebrated his 80th birthday at a surprise party thrown by the neighbours. They contacted his old regiment who sent along a bugler and he was touched when they had a collection to raise the fare for him to visit the twins in Scotland. By then Albert spent his days with visits to his allotment and his nights enjoying a pint in the snug of the Rovers, in heated discussion with the likes of Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell.
He was delighted when Ken married Deirdre Langton, who had a four-year-old daughter Tracy from her previous marriage to Ray Langton, in 1981. They all moved back in to number 1, with Albert gladly giving up his room for the newly-weds to move into the front parlour. In early 1984, with his health detoriating, he went to live with his daughter Beattie and was never seen on the street again. Albert died in May 1984, aged 88, but not before selling number 1 to Ken for £10,000 the previous year.
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