Bill Kenwright was my mum’s friend long before he became mine. They worked together on Coronation Street in the late 1960s when my mum was already an old hand in the show and Bill was introduced as Betty Turpin’s son, Gordon Clegg. She was kind to him back then and he never forgot it.
In recent years, when she began to struggle with illness, Bill repaid that kindness many, many times over. He invited her to his stage productions and arranged a reunion with her and Sir Ian McKellen when he was playing Hamlet at the Theatre Royal, in Windsor, a couple of years ago.