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Ken and Martha in Coronation Street

William Roache as Ken and Stephanie Beacham as Martha holding hands in Coronation Street
  • Posted at 6:17pm
  • 13 March 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 6 comments

There was a lovely moment in a recent Coronation Street when Deirdre Barlow surveyed her life of serene domesticity during a happy bout of ironing. All chez Barlow was perfect, but for one little wrinkle in the checked tablecloth of Deirdre's existence: "If only our Tracy was out of prison, it would be just perfect." No sadness attached itself to this particular sentence; it wasn't weighed down by the ballast of sentimentality. Deirdre simply went back to ironing husband Ken's shirts.

Ken looked pained, and not because Deirdre had so carelessly mentioned his incarcerated stepdaughter. No, Ken was pinpricked by guilt because he's in the throes of a relationship with another woman, an actress called Martha, a pan-sticked temptress with a cafetiere and a love of interesting scarves.

Martha (the rather wonderful Stephanie Beacham) is Ken's soulmate because she's the most perfectly bourgeois bit-on-the-side. They even bonded over a mutual love of Radio 4 and they talk about plays (well, she is an actress).

Ken's middle-class heart is at last being allowed to sing. He can refer to "dinner" and mean "evening meal" rather than "lunch"; he can talk about proper books and American documentary-maker Ken Burns; he can even have long chats with Martha about his love for the work of polemical bisexual intellectual Susan Sontag.

Thus Ken's relationship with Martha is the parole he so richly deserves after years of breaking rocks in the prison yard of his marriage to Deirdre. He's snapped his working-class chains; he can talk about Japanese cinema and he can laughingly quote from Shakespeare as he spears a pickled onion ("Out, vile jelly!").

And Martha knows the way to his decadent, university-educated soul - she gave him a kimono as a present, which is surely the perfect indicator of all that is louche. She might just as well have given him a powdered wig.

I hope Martha and Ken are soon in the throes of ecstasy after a night of nibbling erotically on ginger thins and reading Simone de Beauvoir. You deserve it, Ken.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times

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Comments

  • Posted on 01 May 2009
  • at 8:40pm
  • by Jason

I reckon Deirdre will set fire to Ken's kimono when she eventually finds about his affair with Martha.

  • Posted on 24 April 2009
  • at 2:12pm
  • by Chris

He's wise and old they call him Ken, Barlow, Barlow, He's smarter than his fellow men, Barlow, Barlow, His pants are beige, His mate's Ted Paige, The proletariat fuels his rage, Kenneth Barlow, great novellist hidden inside.

  • Posted on 22 April 2009
  • at 12:35pm
  • by bella

hope it works out with ken and martha. good story line.

  • Posted on 25 March 2009
  • at 2:17pm
  • by trish

Ken is being duplicitous and he knows it. No mention to Martha of his relationship with Deirdre (are they actually married and is he removing his wedding ring whenever he takes Eccles walkies?) and no attempt to explain to Deirdre where he has dallied when he returns home fatter after his sumptuous meals avec Martha Hari. Now, who could Deirdre have a dalliance with ....?

  • Posted on 16 March 2009
  • at 3:47pm
  • by JohnnyFox

Since Deirdre's fag-wracked voice has now descended below baritone, it's no wonder Ken finds her unappealing, she's more of a man than he is. No wonder it's "no contest" between Arthur and Martha.

  • Posted on 16 March 2009
  • at 11:04am
  • by amanda

i think Ken is a dirty dog and after all those girlfriends and wives, he should have learnt that honesty is the best policy, poor deirdre

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