Elsie Tanner leave Weatherfield. Her final appearance was screened at the beginning of 1984. Pat Phoenix died of lung cancer in September 1986 at the age of 62. Elsie, her character, died in a car crash, at the age of 81 in 2004 after leaving Weatherfield 20 years earlier, although it was not mentioned in the show until 2011. Elsie Tanner Elsie Tanner (also Grimshaw, Howard and Gregory) is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera, "Coronation Street", played by Pat Phoenix from the series inception in 1960 to 1973 and from 1976 until 1984. Elsie Tanner was one of
The Riordans on RTÉ. A spin-off series, "Bracken" was launched around "Pat Barry" (Gabriel Byrne), and which featured Irish actor Niall Toibin, Mick Lally and former "Coronation Street" actor Joe Lynch (who had played a lover of the Street's "Elsie Tanner"). After two series, that show was replaced as planned by its own spin-off, "Glenroe", which followed the Lally and Lynch characters as they moved from the fictional townland of Bracken to the outskirts of the fictional town of Glenroe. The axing of "Glenroe" in 2001 brought to an end the tradition of rural soap operas on RTÉ. Since the axing of