Tart of Gold
She was a chav icon and slapper pin-up, but, oh, how we will miss Corrie’s Becky McDonald.
Eamonn McCann, 15 Feb 2012
A small light went out in my life when Becky left Coronation Street. But at least they gave her a happy ending, off on the arm of a man who loves and respects her, hand in hand with his five/six year-old son, the child she’d always craved but couldn’t have, for a new life in sunny Barbados.
Katherine Kelly had made of Becky – earrings, fags, peroxide hair and no sense at all when it came to men – a fierce, fragile, constrained free spirit, a dare-gale skylark scanting in a dull cage, weaving an uncertain way in tottering heels and the sexiest leggings ever pulled on through indomitable hope and repeated betrayal, always in trouble.
The role required an actor of rare sensitivity and range, capable of conveying within the conventions of soap opera complex emotions to flicker on the face. Ms. Kelly emerged as a formidable talent, the only actor I can think of whose respect in the profession was hugely enhanced by a longish stint in a soap.
She opened within a week of leaving the Street, on January 24, at the National Theatre in London, playing Kate in Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer, to splendid reviews. From Corrie to the classics in one sassy skip.
Beautiful.
“Don’t travel home at 5pm. Go down the pub and travel at 6.30pm.”
Transport for London commissioner Peter Hendy’s strategy for easing Olympic congestion.
Remember that fellow from the North who made a stirring speech to his troops before they stomped into Iraq?
Never happened, of course. The only record of the alleged oration came from an embedded Daily Mail hack. But the story made the guy a hero to hero-worshippers of war. He was played by Kenneth Branagh on Channel 4.
Reputation as a charismatic commander established, Tim Collins bought himself out of the army and set up a “military consultancy”, New Century, which last year landed a $45 million Pentagon contract to train the Afghan army and police how to “find and cultivate informants among the Taliban.” Intelligence Online reports that, “Most of the instructors are not US but Northern Irish, former members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which for many years was in the front line of Britain’s combat with the IRA.”
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