Corrie comes out of the closet

Coronation Street has never been the straightest of soaps. A succession of tragi-comic heroines with snagged tights and razzy shampoo-and-sets have spiked their stilettoes into the Street, lending it a back-alley, camp appeal. Some of its elder statesmen - Fred "I say" Elliott and Norris, the Kabin's busybody - appear to have stumbled on their heterosexuality by accident. And, lest we forget, the whole imaginary suburb of Weatherfield was dreamt up in the early 60s by Tony Warren, one of Manchester's most fondly regarded gentleman of a certain persuasion.

But camp is camp; in 2004, gay is an altogether different matter. So, in an open acknowledgment of its previously clandestine relationship with sexual difference, last year the soap introduced its first character with gay leanings, Todd Grimshaw. After tentatively stepping out of the closet and kissing his girlfriend's brother, Todd scampered back in. Since then, he's proposed to said girlfriend, who is now expecting their baby. But with the introduction to the Street of another gay character, there is tumult ahead.

"People always ask why it's taken 42 years," says scriptwriter Daran Little. "But the gay content has always been implicitly there." Bruno Langley, who plays Todd, says Corrie's coming out was inevitable. "Manchester has a very big gay community. If Coronation Street doesn't at least nod to that, then it stops being about Manchester." Little agrees: "You have to be a mirror to the real world. If you don't then you run the risk of becoming outdated."

If it was predictable that the soap should eventually introduce someone gay to wallop it into 21st-century Manchester, the big surprise is how gracefully it has been pulled off. Soapland' s track record in this area has not been particularly impressive, says Little. Only Emmerdale's treatment of Zoe Tate has been remotely credible: "At least she's consistent in her lesbianism. Most lesbian characters are so lipstick. They start off straight and, lo and behold, they just can't resist it. You can see the straight fantasy at work behind the character." A recent example of this is another Zoe - EastEnders' pretty, tabloid-friendly 18-year-old - who recently brushed with lesbianism for all of five minutes.

Gay men have not been portrayed much better, says Little. "[Brookside's] Gordon Collins? Ugh. Those two gay boys in EastEnders? I can't even remember their names. I just did not want to look at them." Todd Grimshaw, however, is both easy on the eye and a well-drawn model of Mancunian teenage sensitivity. "When I sat down and started sketching the characters of the Grimshaw brothers, it was always clear in my mind that one of them was going to find his father and the other was going to question his sexuality," Little says. "These were two things that I had done, so I could draw directly on my own experience."

Over lunch on Canal Street in Manchester's Gay Village, Little told Langley that his character was about to become a scion of teenage sexual uncertainty. "I wasn't sure that it was right for the character at first," says Langley. "But Daran explained that it was basically his own story. He'd been married and had children and came out later. From talking to Daran I learnt that anyone could be gay."

"I was violently in denial about my sexuality," confirms Little. "We wrote in a huge storyline about Todd and [his soon to be ex-girlfriend] Sarah having sex just after her 16th birthday. Bruno said to me, 'Oh, does that mean that Todd's not gay anymore?' I said, 'Yes, he is. He's just doing this. People do. They don't necessarily come out fully formed or ready to be gay.' "When Sarah broached the subject of sex, Todd was very nervous and afterwards he was totally over-enthusiastic about it because he was so relieved that he could do it. I felt that was a very honest reaction. Because I'd been there myself as a teenager, I knew the confusion and the fear of the unknown. The fear of rejecting society's norm."

In a moment of arch soap intertextuality, Todd came to first question his sexuality last year, when he found himself attracted to Sarah's brother Nick, played by gay pin-up Adam Rickitt. Accompanied by a predictable flurry of tabloid interest, Corrie's first gay kiss was watched by an audience of more than 14 million. There were little more than half a dozen complaints logged, none of which were upheld by the ITC. "The audience loves Todd," says Little. "Most of this is to do with Bruno's performance. They want him to be happy. It was always important to me that if we brought in a gay character then it should be someone whom the audience have learnt to love first. Bruno's carried that off brilliantly."

In fact, the expected backlash came from the most unexpected of quarters, Little says. "After the kiss, a lot of gay people said to me 'Is that it?' Some people thought it was predatory to have Todd try to kiss a straight boy but to me that was all part of his confusion." To alleviate the gripes from gay viewers, Little had one last ace up his sleeve. The introduction of Coronation Street's second gay character, Karl Foster. And another gay kiss, this one with a happier ending.

"I started thinking about a gay character for Coronation Street after going to [Manchester gay club] Essential," says Little. "Every time I went in there, there'd be a huddle of kids in the toilet talking about their A-levels. Very confident. Very together. Karl is that character. Todd has opened the door to introduce someone more together to play him against. Karl has been out since he's 17 and he' now 23. He's very confident in his sexuality. He's had a hard time off his dad, a bit of stick at school. He's gone through all that and know's exactly who he is."

As ever in the tumultuous world of soap, the course of true love is unlikely to run entirely smoothly. "We can go anywhere we want with the characters now," enthuses Little. "That's the beauty of setting something up over a long period of time."

As for the reaction within Corrie, well, everyone's delighted. "The producers are 100% behind the storyline," says Little. "There's no turning back. Now we've opened the door properly, I think that there'll be a gay character in Coronation Street for ever."

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