This is a piece from the Guardian's TV (television not transvestite) critic. I have shown it in full plus 2 comments, as Corrie has clearly helped in the debate over trans gendered people in everyday life. It was written by Paul Flynn and is titled "Coronation Street's Hayley Cropper has changed soaps for ever"



"There is a poignant moment in the Morrissey autobiography where the author happens upon the shooting of a Coronation Street episode in the 1970s. "Television is the only place where we banish ourselves from the community of the living," he says, "and where the superficial provides more virtue than the actual." I read these thoughts the day after Hayley Cropper had been lead around the parquet dancefloor of Blackpool's Empress ballroom by her husband Roy as the Wurlitzer organist played Close to You. In late July, Hayley was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. On her return from Blackpool, she told Roy of her decision to end her own life when the time felt right. All of it slotted into the tradition of bold pathos locked into tender northern storytelling.

For Coronation Street fans, the denouement of Hayley Cropper is stinging long and hard. History will likely judge it among the saddest of Weatherfield exits. In her own small way, Cropper has changed the way we watch soap opera. She has shifted a corner of the national debate into warmer, more inclusive terrain. Roy and Hayley are one of the few outposts in soap you can turn to for moral virtue. Among the serial killers, pin-ups, playboys, alcoholics and adulterers of contemporary Corrie, the couple in the zip-up cardigan and the red anorak have become an unlikely symbol of purity.

Roy and Hayley defy television's glamour axis. Hayley was introduced as the punchline to a clumsy gag, reflective of less enlightened Corrie times. In 1997, it was not right but it was OK to make primetime jokes at the expense of the British margins. The producers had decided that perennial middle-aged virgin and fusspot Roy was ready to seek companionship. Hayley was to be the first in a string of disastrous blind dates he had organised after posting a lonely hearts ad. The intended joke was that Hayley was a pre-op transsexual born Harold Patterson. Trust Roy! It quickly, magically backfired, as the discreet chemistry between actors David Neilson and Julie Hesmondhalgh lit up a quaint corner of the screen.

Roy and Hayley's modern storyline has been played straight and old-fashioned, carrying with it a notoriously rigid audience resistant to moving with the political moment, let alone surpassing it. Hayley was whipped off to Amsterdam to complete her gender reassignment surgery and an initially affronted Roy strode into town to declare his love. They married in an impromptu ceremony, not legally recognised, in his newly acquired greasy spoon, Roy's Rolls, aided and abetted by the character at the centre of the last heartbreaking Coronation Street cancer demise, Alma Sedgewick.

This was a time just prior to the parochial, then national recognition, of the gay village circumnavigating Canal Street as one of Manchester's social heartlands. It predated Channel 4's pivotal gay drama Queer as Folk by two years and transgendered Portuguese starlet Nadia Almada winning Big Brother by seven. It was eight years before civil partnerships became recognised in statute and Elton and David validated the legalese for suburbia. It is astonishing, in retrospect, to be reminded that Coronation Street's first LGBT character and foreground storyline was T.

The beauty of Hayley – and it's a testament to the brilliant actress who plays her – is that she has never been just a T. She is foremost, always, an H. Humanised at every corner by her soft delivery, generous ear, calm, maternal instinct and wonky half-smile, Hesmondhalgh has gifted Hayley a full three dimensions. She and Roy have spun a spider's web of friends throughout the Street and, in malevolent Tracy Barlow, one enemy. Roy and Hayley's love affair has been Corrie's take on a Burton and Taylor moment, as if enacted over a lager and lime in Napoleon's, the boozer on the corner of Bloom and Sackville Streets that has warmed and watered the city's real-time Hayleys since the 1960s.

Figuratively, the effect of Hayley Cropper, Coronation Street's first transgender character, is trickier to quantify. When she first appeared in Weatherfield, Hayley became instant target practice for the prejudices of the Sun's then TV columnist Garry Bushell. His campaign of ire hasn't relented with quite the withering speed of his influence over the years. "Hayley Cropper's real health issue?" he wrote in the Daily Star in July, upon the character's terminal cancer diagnosis: "Ingrowing testicles!"

As one writer full of prejudices reverses from view, more enter centre-stage. When Michael Singleton, the coroner in the case of transgender Accrington primary school teacher Lucy Meadows delivered his verdict on her suicide in March this year, he pointed out her treatment at the hands of the press for special criticism. He used the words "ridicule and humiliation", "character assassination" and finished with: "And to you, the press, I say, shame on all of you."

When Hesmondhalgh bows out as Hayley Cropper in January, she will take a bucketful of tears with her. "The tide comes in quickly," she said to Roy as they stood in the shallows on a stunning, grey Blackpool beach last week. The inference was clear. Neilson has said that viewers respond to the couple because of their decency. For Hayley, those still waters run deep. In a soap world of self-interest and ambition, bed-hopping and backstabbing, she represents goodness. Hesmondhalgh leaves an open goal for producers, too. The next time they want a transgender character, perhaps they can employ a transgender actor to play them. There surely couldn't be a better way of honouring their accidental tumble into the 21st century with Hayley back then."

Paul Flynn, The Guardian, 23rd October 2013

Here are some comments chosen by the Guardian to reflect teh views of our community

1. Kara Connor

Great article. My mother died of pancreatic cancer, and I'm trans, so this storyline is more than hypothetical for me. Brilliantly handled, on the whole, by the Corrie writers. Thank you for such a thoughtful article, Paul Flynn.
Bushell, on the other hand, is a moribund dinosaur, desperately trying to resurrect interest in himself by picking on a group of people around 10 times more likely to be murdered than most, and of whom around half will attempt suicide at some point whilst trying to come to an understanding of who they are.


2. Christine Burns

It could all have been so different, were it not for the way in which the Coronation Street producers responded positively to the concerns and criticisms of a trans community which, in 1997/8, was finding its feet and its voice, and an awareness of how media representation of their realities could shape their political futures. When Hayley first appeared (in a story that was originally going to run for no more than a few episodes) my colleagues and I had not long set up the online campaigning and education platform for our organisation 'Press for Change'. We were naturally concerned about anything like this coming at us from left field. However, we decided that (as always) we needed to deal with the reality that it was there and run with it. I channelled the concerns of dozens of followers into the simple act of asking them to write to the producers with their concerns and to each ask those producers to talk to us. Two days later I got the call from a story liner, and so began a long collaboration. I was a globe trotting business consultant in those days and couldn't afford the time to speak to Granada's people in person. However, I knew of a trans woman who was a fan of the series and prepared to take on the task. She asked then that I keep her identity secret, so she became Granada's "Press for Change advisor". She wrote a complete back story for Hayley, based on her own true life story and experiences. She developed an amazing working relationship with the story line and scriptwriting team and helped ensure they made no foolish mistakes and were true to the character they wanted to portray. My colleague literally breathed life into Hayley, and then the audience did the rest by taking her to their hearts. Later, once Hayley had had her gender reassignment story the producers were prepared to look at the real challenges which our advisor had explained to them. It was no coincidence that in the week when 18 million viewers watched Hayley and Roy tie the knot (with our advisor discreetly in the back row) Jack Straw felt obliged to announce a working group, involving 12 Government departments, to look into the legal barriers blighting trans peoples' lives. However I agree with Paul that, putting that political stuff aside, the enduring appeal in Hayley (and Roy) is in being so ordinary … and oasis of love and sense in a world of people doing bad to one-another. What's not to like about that?


If you want to know more here is the link to the Guardian below.


Pauline xxx

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/23/coronation-street-hayley-cropper-changed-soaps

Great post Pauline - I haven't watched it since the days of Albert Tatlock, Ena Sharples and the sublime Elsie Tanner, so I am not up on the impact of these characters. But even so the article shows there was an impact and it was a good one. Which reinforces my view that opposing ignorance and bigotry with sympathy and humanity works. Well done for making me want to watch Corrie again xxxx

I can only agree that the Hayley and Roy relationship presented on screen has been a positive impact for us with the public. There was another storyline on the street, which centered around a male/female relationship between Audrey Roberts, and a man who had a secret life as a transvestite which Audrey subsequently discovered. It was a short lived storyline. Which highlighted the dilemma that many transvestites have: A relationship versus a yearning to dress as the opposite gender. Most of us are faced with a choice to make in this respect. That choice is dictated by womens fear of why we do it, based largely on what society historically think of us, which has been mostly negative. So perhaps there is a need for a storyline that explores transvestism even further than it has. Hopefully in a positive light?

fantastic post pauline i dont watch soaps very much i know hwo haley is and well it has mad e me have happy tears your word have moved me i need to watch corrie now lol xx

Brilliant Article Pauline, I remember when Haley joined the street all those yrs ago, although i don't watch it all that much now. xx

By the way - if you can listen to Radio Manchester at lunchtime ( 12- 2) then Beckie Want is interviewing Hayley all this week about how she handled being who "she was" and also about having pancreatic cancer.

Pauline xxx

Another great post Pauline, i'm not a big soap fan.

Elizabeth - does not liking soap make you a dirty mary!!!!!?????