Doris Speed

As a child she toured with her musical and comedy artist parents George and Ada (née Worsley) Speed, moving to different schools almost every week. Her debut came to her at the age of three years, as she toddled onstage in a nightdress to sing a song about a golliwog. Two years later, she made her acting debut as the velvet-suited infant Prince of Rome in a Victorian melodrama, called The Royal Divorce.[1]

She then appeared in repertory theatres and in numerous radio plays. She left acting to work for, amongst others, the Guinness brewery in Manchester, as a clerk. Returning to acting relatively late in life, she had a small role in the 1960 Stanley Baker vehicle Hell Is a City, set in her native Manchester.[1]

She also worked on a 1950s police television series Shadow Squad. In 1960, close friend and writer of Shadow Squad Tony Warren created the soap opera Coronation Street, purportedly writing the character of Annie Walker specifically for her. She appeared in 1,746 episodes and was one of only a handful of original cast members still appearing in the 1980s. In 1983, the Daily Mirror published a story revealing that Speed was 15 years older than she publicly claimed she was (though her birth certificate, which showed she was born in 1899 and not 1914 as she had always claimed, was not printed alongside the story).[2] Speed fainted when she learned the news at work and was advised to go home and rest. Weeks later, her house was burgled while she was asleep. The stress surrounding the incidents caused Speed to have a minor breakdown, and she left Coronation Street and moved into a nursing home. Speed never returned to the programme, although she made a guest appearance in the 30th anniversary special programme, Happy Birthday Coronation Street in 1990, where she was given a standing ovation.[3]

Her final television appearance was an interview given with actor Ken Farrington, who played her on-screen son Billy, in 1993. She died in 1994, at the age of 95.[4]

In the fictional drama The Road to Coronation Street about the creation of the soap, broadcast by the BBC in 2010 as a tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the first episode of Coronation Street, Speed was portrayed by Celia Imrie.

Speed never married. She lived in Southport for many years until returning to Manchester to care for her mother after she became ill. Her mother was a former music hall performer, and died in 1973 aged 95.

Speed was awarded the MBE in 1977.

In contrast to the Conservative-supporting Annie Walker, Speed was a lifelong socialist.[5]

Speed is commemorated by two plaques in her native Manchester: one outside Granada Studios, where she filmed most of her work as Annie Walker, and another at 13 Sibson Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, her home for many years.[6]