Did you see… 1963 

11 March 2023 tbs.pm/78443

Did you see…

Monday 11 March 1963

TVTimes

 

 

Six steps to Ena

 

Violet Carson

 

My name is Violet Carson. I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth. I have just arrived at the studio and I’m smiling. Wouldn’t you be if you’d been told that you had been nominated as the ITV personality of 1962 by the top brass of show business who make the annual awards of the Variety Club of Great Britain? I shan’t be smiling much longer because I’m about to become “‘er with the ‘airnet” and you don’t get many smiles out of her!

 

Violet Carson and a make-up supervisor

 

This is where it all starts – in the make-up department at the Granada Manchester studios. The show starts in half-and-hour and I give my hair a final pat before getting started. I won’t be seeing much more of that for the next few hours.

 

Violet Carson stretches a hairnet

 

Here we go, then. On with the hairnet. Ena just wouldn’t be the same without it, would she?

 

A make-up supervisor works on Violet Carson

 

Now we’re really getting under way. Basic make-up has been applied. Now we’re adding a bit of character. People like Ena best when she’s biting somebody’s head off – and it helps considerably if a couple of disapproving lines are added on either side of that bad tempered mouth

 

Violet Carson applies lipstick

 

Every woman likes to make up her own lips and Violet Carson is no exception. Nor is Ena Sharples for that matter!

 

Violet Carson as Ena Sharples

 

There, the job’s finished. Here I am then, made up, hair-netted and ready for action in the Mission Hall. Now who’s that hammering on the door? There’s never a minute’s peace. If that’s that Len Fairclough and he’s put his mucky feet all over my clean step I’ll run him straight out of Coronation Street! Violent Carson might let him get away with it but I certainly wouldn’t!

 

Pictures specially taken for TVTimes by WARWICK BEDFORD

 

Your comment

Enter it below

A member of the Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
Liverpool, Thursday 28 March 2024