“We are a family of professional cleaners, which puts us higher up in Godliness than some folk I could name.”
Hilda Ogden
Introduction
Coronation Street has produced so many iconic characters since its inception in 1960. The brainchild of Tony Warren continues to entertain 64 years later. One partnership that will permanently be engrained in our memories is that of Hilda and Ogden, played beautifully by Jean Alexander and Bernard Youens. The long-suffering wife who tried to make ends meet at 13 Coronation Street but was forever having to deal with her husband’s antics. A man who preferred to sup beer at the Rovers Return rather than concentrate on his jobs as a long-distance lorry driver and as a window cleaner when they moved to the street in 1964. It was a marriage that constantly rode close to the poverty line, with Hilda snubbed for a job at the factory and resorting to becoming Annie Walker’s cleaner at the Rovers.
Yet this was a marriage that lasted the distance despite all its faults. Beneath the arguments and drama lay a couple who deeply loved each other. A henpecked Stan who loved Hilda in his unique way. He supported her projects of flying ducks or her prized mural on the living room wall whilst secretly taking some money from her rainy day fund to fritter on another hair-brained scheme that he and his accomplice Eddie Yeats had cooked up. A man with an eye for the ladies may have been having a secret affair with one of the customers on his round, Clara Regan of 19 Inkerman Street. An affair that was never proven but only fuelled the image of the husband and wife being the laughingstock of the street.
Hilda called Stan “born idle” and “daft”. After hiding a last reminder water bill in his jacket, which Hilda found while rifling through his pockets on an August Bank Holiday in 1978, she told him to get out on his round, collect the money owed and “insert himself” after he had finished his morning shave rather than be waiting outside the Rovers when it opened. Commands that Stan consistently adhered to avert the red rage of his wife.
Hilda
Hilda Ogden may have been a laughing stock to others, but she was perfectly capable of standing her ground. Her gossiping would constantly get her into trouble, but when push came to shove, she could give Elsie Tanner, Ena Sharples and Annie Walker a run for their money. Her out-of-tune singing was priceless as she grafted, cleaned, and hoovered, but she hid the pain of a woman who had lost contact with her four children. Tony and Sylvia are taken into care after one of Stan’s drunken rages, and Irma and Trevor, who they had a rocky relationship with, with long periods of no contact.
Hilda sums up the definition of being a survivor. She had nothing but made do. A complete opposite of the Liverpudlian actress who was chaste, never had a relationship, and was utterly work-driven. Yet Jean played Hilda to perfection. Donning the hair rollers and cleaning outfits, she assumed the character and, despite the set and crew, made Hilda believable. A hurt woman who was desperate for a better life but was shackled to poverty. A woman who begged for ticks but was constantly shunned. Someone who had to hide money somewhere where her husband always managed to get his thieving hands and continually tried to find the next meal for the living room table. A matriarch in her own right who kept her tears at bay when Stan forgot her birthday, anniversary and Christmas presents. He always made her a good turn when he made her a wrong turn that she knew nothing about. A man who brought her nothing and who she first met when he was drunk in a blackout during the Second World War. Her lines about her husband were always cutting and painful. A woman is scorned but unable to give up on loving her oaf of husband. A woman forced to believe that was muck, sick of being walked on and being the mug of the street—brilliant lines from scriptwriters who lived the mind of Hilda and walked in her life path. Hilda was sick of life and her husband—someone who craved love and attention but had to prise a conversation out of Stan.
Love and Tears
Bernard Youens left the soap in 1984 due to ill health. His character was killed off in a poignant last scene with Hilda crying over Stan’s personal effects from the hospital at the living room table. The scene exposes the couple’s genuine love for each other, but this is only seen in glimpses on camera. Bernard died in August of that year after leaving in March, suffering a heart attack. He was 69. His memory lived on, but Hilda was never the same again. Jean continued in the soap until 1987. A character that Jean played so brilliantly for 23 years. In the soap, her departure was left open for a return. She went to work for Dr Lowther as a cleaner. He subsequently proposed to her, but she turned him down. When he died, he left her his Derbyshire cottage. Jean never returned to the show, attacking the storylines. She would go on to work, starring in Last of the Summer Wine for a number of years before her passing in 2016. She was 90.
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