January
Len reveals that the London Development Company intend to demolish
the Street and redevelop it. Rita leaks the news to an aghast
Rovers. Arthur Harvey, an old friend of Annie, stays at the Rovers
and tells her that she has always been his secret love. His wife
Nellie calls to find him in his pyjamas, and threatens to sue
an outraged Annie for enticement.
Billy Walker returns and buys the garage from Alan Howard. Ken
manages to arrange places for the twins at Bessie Street School.
He meets Janet's ambitious friends, Jill and Phillip Barrett,
and finds them 'inverted snobs'.
February
Len refuses to attend a protest meeting against the redevelopment,
and is sent to Coventry by everyone - except the Ogdens, who are
property owners. Someone throws a brick through his window, unaware
that he has voted against it. Emily sheepishly owns up.
Ken has his first big row with Janet because she wants to send
the twins to boarding school. Albert breaks off his engagement,
and Minnie is relieved because her pension would have been reduced.
Cyril Turpin dies, leaving Betty mentally confused with grief.
March
Cyril leaves only £859, and Betty moves in with Maggie,
hoping to sell the house. Hilda is shortlisted as caretaker for
the Community Centre. The Committee are impressed with a gushing
reference from Annie, but the job goes to Mrs Gertie Robson.
Ken and Janet decide to let the twins remain in Glasgow. Lucille
reveals that she is living with mechanic Danny Burrows, a married
man. Annie thinks she is staying with Lorraine Binks. Emily decides
upon the dramatic society's next production: The Importance
of Being Ernest.
April
Annie Walker hands in her Mayoress's chain. Lucille leaves Danny
after Antlie invites him to tea and gives him the third degree.
Mavis Riley takes a job as a vet's receptionist. Betty, unable
to sell her house, returns to the Rovers.
Curtain-up on The Importance of Being Ernest, with Annie
as Lady Bracknell. Gary Turner, Mrs Robsons nephew, moves in with
her at the Centre. Stan gets Hilda an application form for a job
aboard a luxury cruise liner.
May
With the help of Annie's well-worn reference, Hilda passes the
interview and joins the Seamen's union. She sails on the MV
Monte Umbe, leaving Mrs Robson to monitor Stan's movements
in the vicinity of 19 Inkerman Street.
Warehouse chief Sir Julius Berlin, impressed at Ken's handling
of the redevelopment protest, offers him a job. When Ken refuses,
Janet walks out on him, but he reconsiders and takes the offer.
Alf Roherts helps Maggie out in the Corner Shop.
June
Stan has taken in lodgers Tommy Deakin and his nephew Michael
Ryan, and is breathalysed driving a Rolls they borrowed. The lodgers
quit, leaving Stan with a donkey, the mainstay of their garden
manure business.
Hilda returns, but when Stan confesses his impending £200
fine, refuses to help. Maggie's old flame Ron Cooke, the reformed
alcoholic, proposes. She turns down a counter-offer from Alf Roberts
and accepts.
July
A young soldier, Martin Downes, calls at the Rovers trying to
trace his long lost mother, called Elizabeth. He discovers that
it is Bet Lynch but, appalled by her vulgarity, leaves without
telling her.
Stan's £50 fine and £143 solicitor's bill leave Hilda
with £7 from her cruise wages - and there is more bad luck
to come. She asks Annie for a rise and gets the sack. Maggie Clegg
marries Ron Cooke. Battleaxe Granny Hopkins and son Idris, the
new Corner Shop owners, refuse Hilda credit. Ken Barlow leaves
Bessie Street, with a presentation tankard and briefcase, for
his new job. Gail Potter first appears in the Street, as a clerk
at the Warehouse. Vera Hopkins, Idris's wife, leaves after a row
with Granny.
August
Stan and Hilda are offered the caretakership of the Centre, and
put their house up for sale. The Council withdraw the offer in
view of the Ogden's record with the Health Department. Annie takes
Hilda back with a small wage increase.
Ken faces his first test when unions at the Warehouse demand recognition.
Billy Walker and Deirdre Hunt fall in love, then he meets her
corset-fitter mum Blanche Hunt, who takes a fancy to him.
September
Ray Langton goads Billy Walker about Deirdre, and the difference
in their ages, and gets a black eye. Albert Tatlock is roughed-up
by soccer hooligans at the Centre. Landlord Wormold's assistant
Jimmy Graham falls for Rita and offers to leave his wife for her.
Stan and Hilda tell everyone they are going on a tandem holiday,
but secretly leave the bike at the station and take the train
to Morecambe. The porter sends it back while they are away, and
they retnrn embarrassed in their cycling togs on foot.
October
Deirdre and Billy agree to marry. The girls win a package holiday
to Majorca on 'Place the Ball'. Mavis Riley is flustered by a
Spaniard called Pedro, and Rita falls for a bronzed beach boy.
Bet lingers with a property con-man and misses the plane. Annie
returns to find that Billy is serving after-hours drinks in the
Rovers.
At the garage, Billy services a van crammed with stolen suede
jackets from the Warehouse. Billy is arrested and spends a night
in the cells. Ken secures his release by obtaining a confession
from the father of one of the young thieves.
November
Marital problems lead to separate beds for Emily and Ernest. They
decide to become foster parents and temporarily take in two black
children whose father is in hospital. Ken, still sorting out shop-floor
problems at the Warehouse, falls for union organiser Peggy Barton.
Billy Walker reveals that he lent Bet the £70 air fare to
get home from Majorca - the money he had saved to buy a ring for
Deirdre.
December
For a joke, Bet persuades her Spanish neighbour Carlos to call
Mavis and impersonate Pedro, her holiday lover. He asks for a
date, but confesses the hoax; they spend Christmas together. Eddie
Yeats, Jed Stone's Walton cell-mate, arrives to spend the holiday
with Minnie, and cashes in on a power cut by selling cut-price
candles at the Rovers.
Granny Hopkins finds a birth certificate in the back of a Corner
Shop drawer which shows that Gordon Clegg's mother is Betty Turpin,
not Maggie. As the sale of the shop is still going through, she
tries to use it to lever a lower prlce.