Coronation Street Elsie and Bet. Other recurring archetypes include the war veteran such as Albert Tatlock (Jack Howarth), Percy Sugden (Bill Waddington) and Gary Windass (Mikey North), the bumbling retail manager like Leonard Swindley (Arthur Lowe), Reg Holdsworth (Ken Morley), Norris Cole (Malcolm Hebden), quick-tempered, tough tradesmen like Len Fairclough (Peter Adamson), Jim McDonald (Charles Lawson), Tommy Harris (Thomas Craig) and Owen Armstrong (Ian Puleston-Davies), and the perennial losers such as Stan and Hilda, Jack and Vera, Les Battersby (Bruce Jones), Beth Tinker (Lisa George) and Kirk Sutherland (Andrew Whyment). Villains are also common character types such as Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford),
Storylines of Coronation Street to be shown 50 years later, a "Coronation Street" insider said in an interview, "At the time, it deemed controversial. But compared to what goes on in soap operas nowadays, I don't think the scenes will be very shocking". Sheila's suicide attempt has been compared to that of Natasha Blakeman's (Rachel Leskovac) in 2010 in the soap. In 1968, "Coronation Street" scriptwriters developed one of the programme's most dramatic storylines to date. While Ken Barlow was working on a school play, his wife Valerie was kept hostage after a convicted rapist, Frank Riley, who had escaped from prison, forced his