Maureen Lipman called on Coronation Street makers not to ‘ditch oldies’

Actress Maureen Lipman has said she called on the makers of Coronation Street not to “ditch the oldies”once the ITV soap returns to filming.

Filming has been paused since March because of the coronavirus pandemic but is reportedly set to resume in June.

Lipman, who plays Evelyn Plummer in the long-running series, said: “I had a word with the producer last week online and I said don’t ditch the oldies because the oldies are what Corrie is about. Otherwise we might as well call ourselves Hollyoaks.

“They said ‘oh no, we’ve no intention of doing that’, so I said ‘why don’t you just let me and Roy [played by David Neilson] sit in a garden somewhere and have a conversation about [US President] Donald Trump’s hair.'”

The makers of the show are finalising plans for the soap to return to production, a spokeswoman for the programme told the Press Association.

She said today: “We are in the final stages of working with others across the industry on a return to production protocol and we are in active discussions with Government on this.”

She added that the “health and wellbeing of our people and those who work with us has always been our highest priority and remains so as we look to restart production”.

Lipman made the comments during a guest appearance on the JN Podcast, released today, where she discussed the interactive cooking session she helped lead this week as part of the interfaith volunteering scheme Every Mitzvah Matters.

During the virtual cook-along, Lipman showed some 400 online users tuning in how to prepare her special bean and parsley soup recipe. “I was told there were going to be 200 people watching, which is scary enough.  I am a very average cook and that’s spinning it slightly,’ she told the podcast.

She added: “But I am a great fan of Laura Marks, who started Mitzvah Day, and I think it’s a wonderful idea and I had actually said to her ‘I feel a bit selfish, you know I’m in my nice flat and I can go outside into my little courtyard and watch back birds nesting and see the fledglings and all of that … I suppose I’m vulnerable just because I’m over 70, and I don’t know how to help other people more than I do.'”