Tony Warren
| Tony Warren | |
|---|---|
| Born | Anthony McVay Simpson 8 July 1936 Pendlebury, Lancashire, England, UK |
| Died | 1 March 2016 (aged 79) |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Period | 1957–2016 |
| Notable works | Coronation Street (1960–2016) |
Anthony McVay "Tony" Simpson, MBE (8 July 1936 – 1 March 2016), better known by his stage name Tony Warren, was an English television screenwriter, best known for creating the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. He was an actor, created other television dramas and wrote critically acclaimed novels.
Warren was born at 3 Wilton Avenue, Pendlebury, Lancashire. He attended Clarendon Road Primary School and Eccles Grammar School. He trained at the Elliott-Clarke theatre school in Liverpool. He adopted Warren as a stage name in his early acting career. He became a regular on BBC Radio Children's Hour and acted in many radio plays, performing with many actors who became household names through Coronation Street, most notably Violet Carson who played Ena Sharples and Doris Speed who played Annie Walker. In his memoirs, Over the Airwaves, Children's Hour producer, Trevor Hill, explains how Warren was an excitable young teenager at rehearsals, so much so that on one occasion Violet Carson warned "If that boy doesn't shut up, I'll smack his bottom!" During a later unexpected transmission break from London while performing at the Leeds studio, Carson played and sang to the children a dialect song called "Bowtons Yard" in which the storyteller speaks about his neighbours. Starting at Number 1 and ending at Number 12, he describes each person in turn and Warren later admitted this is what gave him the inspiration for Coronation Street.
Warren acted on stage and in several early ITV Plays of the Week.
According to BBC producer Olive Shapley who had worked with Warren on Children's Hour, the idea for Florizel Street (which became Coronation Street) came to him late one night in 1959 while they were returning to Manchester by train. Shapley recalled:
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