I’m Part Cobble, Me: The Legacy of Gail Platt on Coronation Street

Gail and Jesse on Coronation Street, CT design — Gail's gone (Credit: ITV)

A tribute to Gail Platt on Coronation Street

There was a cracked cobblestone near my grandmother’s house, and in my heavy child’s wheelchair, I would go over it endlessly; I could never forget the feel of that groove. Gail Platt has lived on Coronation Street for 50 years as she said, “I practically know every cobble back-to-front.” My own Mancunian twang has smoothed out over the years, but I remember the tastes and the tones of voices. Gail reminds me of the women who were represented in my childhood, my grandmother whose stateliness, sternness, and small stature meant you listened, especially when her voice creaked just so.

The neighbour who had a hair salon where I would spend hours listening to the intricately woven gossip; I can still taste the hairspray in the air; to be Mancunian is to know warmth, hard, often knotty warmth. The Platt family are represented a little in my mother raising three children largely single-handedly and doing her best; and in my little fist once connecting with my older brother’s jaw because he was doing my head in. I didn’t mean it. The collision came with a sickening crutch, and as the third of three, I knew to leg it. I often say I would give my siblings my kidney but never my phone charger, and it’s a simplistic and true way to look at sibling bonds, often complicated and gritty but smooth in the right places. But the Platt siblings’ stake-less Succession is also often the best bit because it feels so carefully drawn from life in harsh lighting.

Corrie Gail smiling — An amazing character (Credit: ITV)

A fictional character who encapsulated real life

When Audrey, Gail, David, Sarah, Nick and other family members gather in the Bistro to say nice things to each other, it takes an effort. Sarah’s the Princess, Nick has a rod up his backside, and Gail, possibly warped by a lifetime of war-watching but ever hopeful, suggests that “the Riot Act’s been read, so it should be better now.” They feel honest and human, a fleshed-out working-class Mancunian family. It’s in the realness of the intergenerational huff. For all the extraordinary things that have happened to Gail, the husbands and the staircase scuffle, her ability to pull back and reflect everyday women has made her so enduring; she knows every cobble back to front, as my grandmother would, as my mother might, as I would know how to find the groove years later.

In every familiar moment, every sibling knock about the head and bit of lip, that could be us. The Platt’s ordinariness has such wonderful simplicity; it’s honest, caring, comical, sometimes bitter, sad, and snide. But Gail is always there doing her best, and it’s often hard not to wince sympathetically. As she notes with certainty, “My life’s all about struggling through, settling for what I’ve got. I didn’t get this family easily.” That understated strength was always there through every age of life, decade, hair change, well-meaning blunder, well-honed Eileen slap, knick-knack and tremble of her voice as the cobbles wore a little beneath her feet. The beautiful thing about soap is that you get to see people’s lives unfurl and to live with them a little as they go through it; you get to return to them for a comforting pause, a moment when life can be simple and no one has changed over much; even as I welcomed my first forehead wrinkle this year.

Gail animated on Corrie — Nobody does it like Gail (Credit: ITV)

Gail - A legend who left her mark

The family also offer us an intimate look at four generations of women. It’s an up-close and in-your-face fictional representation of people you feel you know, and it so often gets it just right and near the bone: that beautiful ugliness. She’s the concrete backbone of the street, attracted and related to Norman Bates with a briefcase case. She is an iconic character like Hilda, Jack, Vera, and Deidre, but her gift is in her close-to-homeyness and her feel. The way she is a little careworn, as she said with a sigh in her early days, hers was a life of struggle and acceptance.

It’s in the distress in her voice as she tells a pregnant teen daughter, “You can’t be pregnant if you’ve never had sex”, is understated poignancy. Subtly, that stays with you; there were also moments when she yelled, screamed and fought her way through. Still, it’s often difficult to keep in mind the control required to produce such scenes of devastation and the quiet fury of the line offered to her serial killer husband, “You’ll never have a seedy little affair. But you might hit me over the face with a shovel!” Amidst the slaps, banged doors, and broken plates. That smile has been through things, and no one has earned their rest like Helen Worth and Gail Platt. As she put it, “Been on a bit of a journey, love. And don’t worry, I’ll always want to come home.” After 50 years on the cobbles, Gail is a legend not because of her extraordinariness but because her ordinariness feels so well lived in.

Will you miss Gail?