“If Mr Vincent Price were to co-star with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.”
— Quentin Crisp’s Manners From Heaven (1984)
Never mind some old cockney tripe having yet another overblown anniversary, because in the red corner we prefer to remember Brookside, Phil Redmond’s ordinary but often innovative and trendsetting tale of Scouse folk in a suburban cul-de-sac.
Affectionately known as Brookie, the British soap was the first to have a weekend omnibus, the first to shot inside real homes, and the first programme to feature Alan Partridge. Alas, he was the first resident of the bungalow and (as far as we know) had nothing to do with Radio Norwich.
Still, what droll southerner has never trilled the words “Calm Down, Calm Down!” upon detecting the first sign of a Liverpool accent, any time, anywhere? Though, truth be told, the line I’d oft repeat for comedy effect was usually Bobby Grant’s “whooo dya think ya-are, girrrl?”
Over four decades later and I’m still none the wiser.
Brookie also put everyone from Jimmy McGovern to Anna Friel and Amanda Burton on the path to progress, and had its fair share of memorable storylines in its 2,915-episode run: from incest, plagues and cults to the body under the patio and Gavin found dead in bed before miraculously reappearing as the kidnapped protagonist of Yes’s Owner Of A Lonely Heart.
Brookside’s own tinny synthy Brookside theme music screamed eighties Britain. To be both catchy and unhummable takes some doing, but a chap called Steve Wright (no, not the cheesy Radio 1 DJ) approximated the concept. Though for years urban myth suggested it was fellow Merseysiders OMD behind it.
Talking of beat combos, Brookie was the cool, leftfield and certainly unapologetically left-wing soap to like. Ultravox’s Midge Ure may have dismissed Brookie as “squeaky clean… and they film it in Barratt’s houses,” but plenty of arch miserabilists from north of Watford were on record as ardent watchers. So take a bow Terry Hall, Morrissey, Pete Burns and at least one half of the Pet Shop Boys.
Indeed, when Neil Tennant was unable to accept a cameo as himself in 1988’s spin-off South, the part went to Mozzer instead, proving that, like the PSB frontman, the ex-Smiths singer couldn’t act for toffee.
Despite the Falklands War, the Britain of 1982 was still largely an age of innocence. And in November of that year Brookside hit the small screen for the very first time as the new Channel 4 was launched. Watched by 4.2 million people on that first night, the show ran for 21 years, with the last episode broadcast on 4 November 2003.
Brookie tackled the social issues of drug addiction, racism, gangsters, corruption, and same sex relationships way before any other major soap. And though it had descended into sensationalist self-parody by the end, for me it still felt like a much loved if unwell member of the family had gone, particularly as my grandmother (who never watched Channel 4, for some reason), died three days later.
However, you can’t keep a good soap down, and since 2022 fans have been reliving Brookie’s gritty storylines again via the stupendous STV streamer, where it swiftly broke records as the fastest show to reach 1m streams on the platform.
Not only that but there has been much chatter about Brookside returning as a rebooted drama for the 2020s. I’m friends with a couple of male members of the cast, who have opposing views. Danny McCall, who played Owen Daniels between 1988 and 1993, is giddy with excitement at the prospect of its revival, while Leon Lopez, who portrayed Jerome Johnson between 1999 and 2002, isn’t so sure:
“It’s a hard one. Brookside was one of the most important parts of my life, but it never really worked when they tried to bring back Crossroads, did it? I would have loved it if Brookside had never finished, but I think Liverpool has moved on so much now and there’s other programmes that could be made to take its place. To have such a big gap and come back now, I don’t think it would really work.
“There’s so much going on in Liverpool that isn’t being documented, so it would make more sense to do something on how the city is now, rather than trying to claw back the glory of what Brookside was. Because in reality, Channel 4 shouldn’t have axed it. They got rid of it and that’s their mistake.”
Either way, with ballast aforethought, our resident Scouse columnist Callum Pearce has crafted a Perfect 10-ish of Brookie bods, with an additional Bonus Beats from yours truly at the conclusion.
The Grants (1982–1995, 1997–1998, 2003)
The Grants were arguably the first family of Brookside in the 1980s. Headed by the right Royle Bobby and Sheila Grant, they lived in a four-bed house next to the bungalow, and spawned three kids in Barry, Karen and Damon.
Played by Paul Usher, Barry, the eldest, started out as a bit of a rugged rogue. He was fit, fairly attractive, and good with the ladies until they got to know what he was really like. In 1991, Barry was involved in one of Brookside’s biggest storylines of the era, the death of porntached Terry’s wife, Sue Sullivan.
Viewers saw Sue and her infant son Danny fall from the scaffolding near the parade of shops with a final image that burned into most minds forever as they both lay on the ground dead as a couple of dodos. We didn’t see who pushed her at the time, only a hand that didn’t belong to the actor who did it so that people wouldn’t guess too soon.
The murderer turned out to be Barry, who was trying to keep her quiet about him sleeping with her after a campaign of abuse as he didn’t feel like she was the right person for his ‘bezzie’ Terry.
This was the cue for Barry to morph inexorably into the Close’s resident gangster. These mafioso stories on Brookie (and Eastenders, and much later, Coronation Street) often seemed desperately ratings-chasing, and the characters became less nuanced and less redeemable with every misdeed.
Even Sue’s death could have been passed off as an awful accident but then the next woman in Barry’s life was held hostage at gunpoint by him so eventually he just became a pantomime baddie. His friendship with Terry showed a better side of him in the early years but even in that he would become controlling and scheme to push Terry to do what he wanted. He left the soap a few times and each time would come back more of an established gangster type. By the time he returned for the final episodes, he was living in a massive mansion near Newcastle enjoying the proceeds of his years of crime.
Barry Grant was the only character to appear in the first ever and the last ever episode of Brookside, unless you count the milkman, played by John Whitehall, who had a minor part in both. Whitehall was heard scaring off a cat in episode 1, but the first characters to have a conversation were Bobby and Sheila Grant, setting up the couple as the anchor of the programme’s early stories.
Sue Johnson and Ricky Tomlinson would later reprise their symbiotic working partnership to The Royle Family but both made quite a mark on Brookie in their day, with some amazing acting and hard-hitting storylines including Sheila’s heartbreaking rape and aftermath storyline. On the lighter side (if not in bodyweight), who can forget when second son ‘YTS’ Damon (Simon O’Brien) started working out! The producers wasted no time in having him parade around the house in nothing but skimpy boxer shorts, which sadly came to a grisly end when the character was killed off in 1987’s spin-off (dubbed TV’s first ‘soap bubble’), Damon And Debbie.
Oh, how we weeped.
Harry Cross (1983–1990,1998,1999)
If the phrase “I’m getting too old for this shit,” were a person, that person would be Harry Cross. Haz was your typical curmudgeonly old codger. We often got glimpses of the loyalty and kindness that lurked beneath his cantankerous exterior but he was happiest and at his best when he had something to moan about or be irritated by.
For the period I remember best, Harry had become a widower after the death of his wife Edna (played by Betty Alberge, who already had the distinction of speaking the second line in the very first scene of Coronation Street). Harry lived in the bungalow at No. 6 with his ex-workmate Ralph Hardwick. They both tried to date women with varying degrees of success but they were written very much like an old, married couple.
The character always worked best playing against someone who could annoy him so when Ralph left they would move others into his home to give him somebody to butt heads with until he left in 1990. After inspiring behind the Wirral group Jegsy Dodd and the sons of Harry Cross, he made a surprise return in 1998 for a short stint playing an Alzheimer’s memory loss storyline where Harry had stumbled back to the close thinking he still lived there.
Bill Dean who played him had been a pretty successful stand-up comedian turned jobbing actor in TV and film (ever seen Scum? You really should), and even appeared in the Farm’s video for Groovy Train. But most people who hear his dull monotonous voice would be most likely to recognise it as the voice of Harry Cross from Brookie.
His brilliantly miserable bored delivery worked brilliantly when he was the voiceover announcer for a 1990s telly show named after a certain Scouse slag: “Here she is Ladies and Gentlemen, the blond bombsite herself, Miss Lily Savage!”
Billy Corkhill (1985-1990)
Jimmy Corkhill (1986-2003)
A legend of the latter years, Jimmy Corkhill was best remembered as a loveable layabout rogue, usually with faithful mutt Cracker by his side. They would dip into darker stories with him including substance abuse, domestic violence, depression, killing Ron Dicko’s son in a car crash and of course, he would be tangled up in all the mad gangster stuff that Brookie was obsessed with in its final act. But Jimbo worked best when he was scheming and plotting, bending the rules a bit and generally buggering up everything he touched, leaving fuming relatives in his wake.
Jimmy was a character that you kind of wanted things to go well for but it was much funnier watching his many failures and cock ups. If something bad was going to happen on the close then you could usually bet that it would happen to the tall slim bloke in the double denim.
JC was brought in initially for short stints to give bright spark Billy Corkhill a brother to butt heads with. The very definition of Scouse DILF (swoon), Billy moved into No. 10 Brookside Close in the soap’s third year with wife Doreen (‘Do’, played any the brilliant Kate Fitzgerald) and kids Tracy and Rod the pockmarked plod.
Do’s busybody mother Julia Brogan also popped in from time to time and remains our Steve Pafford’s favourite non-regular character. Played to comic perfection by Gladys Ambrose, Julia was a sort of cross between Corrie’s Hilda Ogden and Blanche Hunt in that she’d swan around in her nude stilettos and red sugar-spun hair, turning up to court cases like they were grand theatre shows.
Armed with a bag of “mint impeeeeerials”, she excelled in schadenfreude and malapropisms, memorably comforting Patricia Farnham after mum Jean had fled with the immortal line, “I’ll be your Harrogate mother.”
It’s fair to say Billy endured some pretty harrowing times during his five years: narrowly escaping a prison stay, armed robbery, depression and a very disturbing episode where at his wit’s end he drove his car round in circles, churning up the neighbour’s lawns as he shouted in despair, “I’m just a doleite!”.
After the collapse of his marriage, Billy was teamed up with Sheila Grant and they were both written out in 1990. Cue the other Corkhill dad becoming a more permanent character with meaty storylines of his own.
As mentioned in the Beth bio, Jimmy Corkhill would be there hamming it up when Trevor Jordache’s way-too-healthy hand came slithering out of the earth making the scenes much funnier than they really needed to be. He would generally be involved in all the important storylines in some way. While other characters came and went. Jimmy would be there for the very last scene drawing a D at the end of the Brookside Close sign making Brookside Closed.
It was a sad sight for many a viewer as he walked away from the close and its backdrop of boarded up properties. But then he’s off to his new life in a mansion with Barry Grant and daughter Lyndsey, played by the Poundland Jane McDonald, Claire Sweeney. His long-suffering wife Jackie (the awesome Sue Jenkins) had wisely fled two years before, but not before the pair won the Best On-Screen Partnership accolade at the British Soap Awards in 2000, and deservedly so.
Did things finally turn out alright for old Jimmy? I doubt it. The mansion probably burnt down under suspicious circumstances before the year was out and he was likely back to his old ways ducking and diving, barely surviving. But who would want to see him any other way?
Billy was solidly played by John McArdle, who went on to enjoy roles in numerous productions, including Waterloo Road, Merseybeat, Emmerdale and The Bill. His screen sibling Dean Sullivan once suggested that, post Brookie, his character Jimmy could be reprised by turning up in other soaps. Sadly he didn’t live to see that realised, and Dean died of prostate cancer in November 2023, at the age of 68.
Beth and Mandy Jordache (1993-1995)
Mother and daughter, with, the latter, Beth, being notable for being the half of the first queer kiss to be shown before the watershed…
Oh hang on, a couple of notes for younger readers: There was a time in very recent history when you could watch TV all day without ever coming across an open queer couple, and seeing two of them snogging was practically unheard of. Anti-woke wankers will probably whinge that you can barely watch anything without one popping up these days, but we had it the other way for long enough so fuck ‘em.
The watershed relates to a time before streaming and saving programmes to watch at your convenience when we were forced to watch shows at the time the channels decided to put them out. Everything before 9pm had to be suitable for ‘family’ viewing, whatever that meant.
Beth was only in the show for a couple of years but remains one of the most memorable characters, partly for her gay relationship but also because of the storyline that brought her and her family into the soap — mum and two daughters being placed in a safe house on the Close as they tried to hide from a physically and sexually abusive father.
Eventually, treacherous Trevor tracked them down and resumed the abuse until Beth and her mum Mandy started plotting to poison him. When he realised what they had been up to, he flew into a rage (“I’ll kill us all!”) and attacked Beth until mother protected daughter by sticking a knife in the horrible old bastard’s back.
Weirdly, that incredibly dark and wretched storyline caused fewer twisted knickers than the same character being depicted in a loving gay relationship. As George Carlin would say, “people are fucking goofy.”
That one kiss was a massive moment for LGB representation on UK TV, though. We were still living under the Conservative confines of Section 28 at the time which meant that showing normal, happy same-sex relationships to young people was seen as ‘promoting’ homosexuality.
For many young people, this may have been the first time they saw a gay couple falling in love and coming out to friends and family. Few things have done more than soaps to normalise queer relationships and show that we’re not so different to everyone else. People used to grow up with the soaps and the characters became like old friends making them uniquely placed to tackle social issues and hold a mirror up to our unreasonable prejudices.
Two decades on, the kiss was considered such a landmark moment in TV history that Danny Boyle used it in his ‘Best of British’ montage at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, going out around the world to zillions of homes. In 76 of those countries watching our lovely lesbians, homosexuality was still illegal.
Alas, Brookie couldn’t keep Anna Friel for long, she was off on her way to bigger and better things, including joining fellow Brookside alumna Amanda Burton (Heather Huntington) in the third series of Netflix crime drama Marcella in 2020.
As is often the way in soapland, buried secrets and buried bodies always pop back up when you least expect them. After Sinbad the window cleaner (Michael Starke) helped them conceal the evidence, Jimmy Corkhill and Eddie Banks are doing a bit of digging when up pops Trevor’s hand, and a surprisingly healthy-looking hand for a man who’s been buried in the back garden for months. I must find out what hand cream he used.
So, mother and daughter were arrested, charged and sent to the slammer. After an intense campaign organised by the residents, the verdict was overturned and just as the gals were due to be released Beth was suddenly admitted to hospital and died, very abruptly, as if the scene had been rewritten in five minutes flat.
Who’s that lady trying to help Eddie Banks go for his Oscar nomination? There’s always a Twist at the end. Eh, Susan?
Bev Dixon (1993–1996, 1998–2003)
Rough as a badger’s arsehole, Bev was brought in as Ron Dixon’s much young lover and was quite a breath of fresh air in a soap that could be relentlessly bleak at times. The comedy couple are probably best remembered for the affair that tempted Ron away from wife DD, and their home CasaBevRon. Bev was a gobshite but she was a funny gobshite. She was just generally around the place gossiping or nagging her latest man and usually putting her foot in her mouth every time she opened it. But she was always fun to watch and everyone knew a Bev type in the real world.
Bev was first seen as a bit of a gold digger because of her age-gap relationship with Ron but her character softened a bit and the locals grew to accept her. After a few exits and re-entries, she and Ron would end up getting married and leaving to live with their son away from the Close.
Scrappy, loud and a good giggle, while she may not have been heavily involved in Brookside’s biggest, most memorable storylines, Bev was certainly memorable and a lot of fun. And who can forget the Dicko’s chickens, with comical names like Kiev and Ham Pie. Delicious!
Callum Pearce
Edited by Steve Pafford
BONUS BEATS BY STEVE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0vbv4qTnUAh, Brookie.
For me, mid eighties Brookside was the show’s undeniable peak, when it was arguably the best soap if not on a rope then certainly on the box. In September 1984, three nurses were introduced, renting No. 7 from Harry Cross. Sadly their story ended with a shocking siege the following summer, which pushed ratings to over 7 million for the first time.
Rewinding slightly further, to January 1984, another instance of aggression in the Close happened, that still ranks as one of my fave TV moments ever. To recap:
I didn’t watch Brookside from the very start, but I do recall switching over to the new Channel 4 just as Gavin Taylor (Danny Ward) was being taken to task by next door neighbour Roger Huntington (Roger Spendlove), because Gavin had an unsightly assortment of stolen cookers on his front lawn.
Gavin’s way of defusing the situation was to ask the appropriately named Roger, “How often do you screw your missus?” To a 13 year-old lad with hormones raging this was dynamite. One regular viewer in the bag there and then.
Gavin was found dead in bed from a brain haemorrhage, which resulted in his widow Petra (Alexandra Pigg) having a fling with Barry then topping herself. Enter Petra’s sister, the hard-nosed harridan Marie Jackson (Anna Keaveney) and her henpecked hubby George (Cliff Howells).
George Jackson was a bit on the wet side, which must have come in handy being a fireman. In 1984, he inadvertently helped Tommy McArdle (hardest man in Liverpool) obtain layout info on a poorly secured warehouse, which was subsequently robbed.
The summer siege overshadowed it somewhat, but in its day the innocent firefighter wrongly convicted for the armed robbery that followed was Brookie’s equivalent of Coronation Street’s Deirdre being sent to prison. The Free George Jackson campaign was quite a thing, but, alas, poor George stayed behind bars.
Just before that, in first week of January we witnessed Marie get into a mahoosive slanging match in the street because she had a grievance with Barry Grant about some botched work on the Taylor house. Sheila did what any mother would do and defend her wayward son, which resulted in the two going hammer and tongue like two fishwives.
All this was stunningly reminiscent of the old ‘60s Corrie catfights involving the likes of Elsie Tanner, Ena Sharples and Annie Walker. In an unbelievable case of coincidence, Elsie’s final farewell to the cobbles took place on ITV just minutes before Sheila and Marie’s barney at 8pm. Now that was one helluva night’s entertainment, and I couldn’t help but slip in a sly reference to the legendary cat fight when lovely Sue Johnston gifted me a cigarette as we waited to watch George Michael at the Manchester Arena in 2006.
Guilty streets have got no rhythm.
