This has been a hellish year for Corrie. I think they will be thrilled to say hello to 2010.

Blanche's best one-liners:

http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s3/coronationstreet/scoop/a189626/a-look-back-at-some-classic-blanchisms.html

This is touching:

Apparently, when the news hit the set, there was a huge and spontaneous round of applause which was extremely moving and lasted several minutes.

Aw, Blanche added so much to the show and was always a hoot. I'll miss her greatly.

RIP Maggie Jones.

Oh no

Not Blanche

I don't think those who haven't seen the show can truly appreciate how truly hilarious this character was.

Here are a set of clips:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blanche+coronation+street&search_type=&aq=f

Here's the AA meeting one, which was seen as a legend:

THANK YOU!

Blanche to Deirdre:

"You need to learn to enjoy other people's misfortune; otherwise, you're going to have a very unhappy old age."

hahahaha!

Blanche to Tracy:

"You look remarkably chipper. Trod on a snail?"

Double hahahahahahaha

Blanche talking about Ross at Peter's AA meeting:

"I've never heard so much self-indulgent whinging in all my life. Is there some correlation between how boring you are and how much you drink?"

triple..

And this just typifies Blanche:

Blanche to Deirdre:

"Good looks are a curse. You and Ken should count yourselves lucky."

The AA scene was an instant classic. I wish that clip would have included the part where Ken's walking down the stairs, and Blanche is just sitting there on one of those motorized chairs that go up and down the stair railing. The look on her face was too much.

<p><span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Maggie Jones was a brilliant actress who relished Blanche's blunt one-liners</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma"> Tim Teeman</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:9pt;"><font face="Verdana">If one of Blanche’s acquaintances at the One O’Clock Club had popped their clogs — and they did, regularly — she wouldn’t waste her time on a glowing testimonial. She would report the news to Deirdre and Ken and add the deceased had always cheated at whist and would not be missed.

Maggie Jones, however, will be missed. Hugely. To many Coronation Street fans Blanche was a finer battleaxe than the legendary Ena Sharples. To many (including myself), Blanche — who came back to the Street full-time in 1998 after odd appearances down the years — was our favourite character. She gleefully defied the maxim that if you hadn’t anything nice to say about somebody, you shouldn’t bother saying it. Instead, she broadcast her malevolence from the rooftops and to her victims’ astonished, deeply offended faces.

Jones was a brilliant actress, lapping up the blunt one-liners the writers took great delight in giving her. Blanche could be kind, but not often. She and Norris were the great gossip-mongering tag team of the Street, revelling in others’ misfortune. Blanche often didn’t have to say anything at all — about her much put-upon daughter Deirdre’s train wreck of a personal life, about her son-in-law Ken’s failures, about her grandson Peter’s alcoholism. She’d just purse her lips. That was withering condemnation enough. Of the brassy Rovers landlady Liz McDonald she said: “Skirt no bigger than a belt, too much eyeliner, and roots as dark as her soul.”

Blanche was at her absolute best at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous this year, which the Barlow family attended en masse for Peter. She asked one group member if he had finished talking, or if he talked even more when he was tanked up. A woman who said the man’s story was illuminating was told she should try bingo — she might just hyperventilate.

It was an incorrect, outrageous tour de force and Maggie Jones’s brilliant Blanche to a tee.</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6941849.ece</font></b></span></p>

Oh, Maggie....

The AA meeting scenes were indeed just pure gold...

Meanwhile, Joe smashing his way into the medical centre in search of pills made it far easier to accept all the months of his addiction. (yeah, I'm still watching Aug eps ) It was a good, unexpected climax.

The way Blanche insists that Ken is gay--and the random references to his gayness--always got me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY2pqLbGHK0

This has been a hellish year for Corrie. I think they will be thrilled to say hello to 2010.

Daily Mail has an article saying how "TV writers have been doing their best to ensure this Christmas is the worst on record".

Not only on The Street, but on every other soap opera too.

Edited December 4, 200916 yr by Sylph

Yeah, they say that every year now. It's a shame. Soaps used to have some happy moments on Christmas. On Corrie, for years they would spend part of the time watching the Queen's speech.

I just recently found out about Maggie Jones, my absolute favorite on the entire show, so sad, i really loved her, such a great actress.

Rest in Peace..Maggie

This is the Corrie site tribute to Maggie/Blanche. She looks so different in her first appearance, smacking Deirdre's husband Ray Langton. Ray was a great character -- he and Deirdre always bantered and sparred, there was much less of the misery she has with Ken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY2pqLbGHK0&feature=player_embedded

OMG What a shock to see her in her first episode! I had never so much seen a single photo of hers from an earlier era....

I just feel sad they didn't use her more since the 70s... it was decades before they brought her on permanently.... She will be so missed.

I also wish they'd used her more earlier on. She was a talk-to for Deirdre, she dated Dave Smith (a bookie who also dated Elsie Tanner), and for a few episodes ran the Rovers (can you imagine later Blanche doing that). She was a very different character back then. Then they wrote her out for years and mostly focused on Deirdre alone. It was only when they brought her back 10 years ago that they added more of the sarcastic touches, but even in the older stuff you can't take your eyes off her.

Of course she wasn't even the first actress to play Blanche but she did take over early on and she was amazing.

Funny, you can see Ken in that 1974 clip, looking on after the slap.

Edited December 27, 200915 yr by CarlD2