This interview by Ken Carriere with Roy Barraclough took place on Saturday 20 February 1999, at the annual British Isles Show in Toronto. I talked to Roy just after he finished a lengthy autograph session, and he took the time to speak with me before heading to lunch. We are in his trailer.

Roy: Take your coat off. It's very warm in here.

Ken: It's a lot busier than last year.

Roy: The show? Is it?

Ken: Yeah. It's a lot hotter in here. There's many more people.

Roy: Really? Oh, that's good then.

Ken: We had Gaynor Faye here last year.

Roy: Oh, good. Gaynor. She's lovely, she really is.

Ken: So what do you think of our little colony over here?

Roy: It's wonderful. I mean I'm just dying to see something of Toronto and explore the city. I'm going to get the chance to do that next week.

Ken: So you're here for a while.

Roy: Yes, till Wednesday night. They'll take me to Niagara on Monday. So I'll do all the tourist things. I shall go up the CN tower, and the revolving restaurant. I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the city

Ken: And I think, if I'm not mistaken, that this week they're airing the episode in which you leave again.

Roy: It must be coming up again this week. Cause I leave on the New Year's Eve, as it were.

Ken: With your granddaughter so to speak.

Roy: That's right

Ken: So that airs sometime this week. So you can watch yourself leave.

Roy: (laughs) How I didn't like it the first time around.

Ken: Is there any chance you'll be back again, in, say, 3 years?

Roy: I think that if I'm back it'll be earlier than 3 years. I won't be living that long (laughs). I just want a break . There's a terrible pressure on the show, you know. You're doing 55 hour weeks. If you're in an area like the Rovers you're used far more. Even if you're only in the background, just saying the odd line here and there, you're in every week, where other areas you get more weeks out. It's pretty hard work. Last year I did 22 weeks without a break, which is a long long time. I thought, this is ridiculous at my age. I thought it was time to take a breather from it, you know. So that's what Iím doing. I might be back. They've left it open anyway.

Ken: So that's good. They haven't killed you off.

Roy: No. Which is nice. (...pauses...) The British press have me retired completely, but that's not true

Ken: What are you going to be doing?

Roy: I'm just going to pick and choose and do odd things. I'm going to do some do some more theatre work, which I really love. I've lined up a show in September. It's just nice to take it easy and just do bits and bobs.

Ken: Are you going to do any theatre in Canada?

Roy: I don't know. I don't know what it's like here. In America they won't have English actors. The equity union stops all that. I don't know whether that's as strong in Canada.

Ken: I don't think, so but I'm not an expert.

Roy: That would be rather nice to do something in Canada. I'd love to do some theatre here. Do they still have the Shakespeare theatre?

Ken: Yeah, in Stratford, Ontario.

Roy: In Startford. That still flourishes.

Ken: Oh yeah, they show more than Shakespeare. They show George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward... 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', I don't know who wrote that.

Roy: That's a Shakespeare play. (laughs)

Ken: Oh it is? (laughs)

Roy: They have a Bernard Shaw festival in Niagara apparently.

Ken: There's a lot of classic British plays that we see.

Roy: Somebody was telling me today that they still do pantominmes, in Hamilton. I don't know whether that's true or not.

Ken: I don't know.

Roy: I thought they'd stopped all that.

Ken: I hadn't heard. (...pauses...) Was your decison to leave anything to do with the recent youth movement on Coronation Street?

Roy: The "youth movement"? (laughs) Sounds like the Hitler youth. (laughs)

Ken: You know, they phased out the older ones and brought in the rock 'n' roll younger kids.

Roy: That's right. Well, I have to say one began to feel one was a bit of a dinosaur. (laughs) I think they're going to get the balance right... go back a bit with the younger ones and bring the older ones slightly to the fore. I think they overdid it when they first brought all the young ones in and it was ALL the young ones. And all the old ones were sort of pushed into the backgoround. But I think they've learned their lessons now and they're beginning to regret that balance now. I think they'll get it right.

Ken: What part of Coronation Street do you think you'll miss the most? The people? The 55-hour weeks?

Roy: (laughs) I certainly won't miss that. Iíll miss a lot of the people. Bill Tarmey who plays Jack. We had a great sort of relationship. We loved working together. We had a lot of fun. I'll miss working with Barbara, who plays Rita Fairclough ...

Ken: Oh right.

Roy: ... because we go back a long way. We were in theatre in stock theatre, years and years and years ago. So we have a long history. It was lovely to finish my current stint with my storyline with Barbara, you know, with Rita. So I shall miss them. I shall miss Sue Nicholls who plays Audrey because she's a great fun lady. She's great fun to be with. I'll miss the people.

Ken: My last question, because I know you're in a hurry...

Roy: No, it's fine.

Ken: ...Are there any sort of behind-the-scenes funny stories you can tell me?

Roy: Nothing that Canadian papers would print. (laughs) They're all too filthy. (laughs) (thinks) The guy who played Percy Sugden - Bill Waddington - because of his age, had a lot of difficulty learning lines. So he used to have cribs, some bits of paper. And some of these lines he'd write on the beermats on top of the Roversí bar, so he could just glance down on these beermats you see. And the first time I was made landlord, my very first scene, I went into the bar and there were all these beermats scattered about the top of the bar. I thought, This is a bloody mess, and I gathered them all up. Put them up on the counter. They started the scene and percy walked in (laughs) looking around and all these beermats had gone. He said, "Who's pinched me lines?" We had to stop the whole tape and start again. He said to me never do that again. I was the new boy. I thought, Oh God, I'll be sacked next week. That was the funniest. Another funny incident with Bill. He couldn't remember one word: inconsequential. He kept stumbling over this word. So he decided he'd write it on a strip of paper and he stuffed it inside the band of his hat. The idea was that he was going to take his hat off and put it on the bar and it'd be there inside, he could just look at it. Well, unfortunately he'd written it in felt tip pen, so when he took his hat off, this word was back-to-front across his forehead (laughs)

Ken: They had to stop tape, I guess.

Roy: Exactly. Some TV companies do out-takes. Granada have never allowed any of them out. I shall miss the fun because we used to have a lot of fun.

Ken: I was reading Johnny Briggs's autobiography recently and he always said it was a lot of fun.

Roy: Yes it was. We were always playing little jokes on each other, trying to make people laugh before the camera. So there is a lot of fun. When you 're working that hard, I think you've got to have a laugh. You've got to enjoy it and have a laugh. I don't think the directors enjoyed very much of it. (laughs)

At this point, well aware of the time, I thanked Roy for his time and left him to have his long overdue lunch. I'm happy to say he's the exact opposite of cold-hearted, evil, Alec. "I was afraid [Canadian fans would] show up with hatchets" Roy said to me before the interview "since everyone hates my character."

This article is © copyright 1999, Ken Carriere, and was first published in an abridged form on the TV Guide website. Permission must be given before any reproduction.

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