{"id":24377,"date":"2025-04-16T09:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T09:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/24377\/"},"modified":"2025-04-16T09:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T09:23:08","slug":"coronation-street-icon-hasnt-watched-itv-soap-in-15-years-in-snub-celebrity-news-showbiz-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/24377\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronation Street icon ‘hasn’t watched ITV soap in 15 years’ in snub | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Coronation Street<\/a> writer Daran Little has confessed he no longer watches the show having defected to EastEnders<\/a> 15 years ago. He also snubbed one of the current stars of the show by admitting he has “no idea” who she is. The 58-year-old BAFTA<\/a> winning writer was tagged in a post on X on Tuesday marking the birthday of Dolly Rose Campbell, 38, who plays Gemma Winter-Brown on the long running ITV<\/a> soap. “No idea why I\u2019m being tagged in this. I haven\u2019t watched the show for 15 years and have no idea who this actress is, but hope she has a nice birthday,” he penned.<\/p>\n

Expanding on his admission that he no longer watches the show he also revealed Coronation Street<\/a> bosses banned him from watching rival BBC<\/a> soap EastEnders<\/a> during his time working on the show. “Since people seem so interested in my viewing habits: up to 1985 just Coronation Street<\/a>. 1985-1988 both Coronation Street<\/a> & EastEnders<\/a>. 88 started on Coronation Street<\/a>, stopped watching EastEnders<\/a> as Coronation Street<\/a> bosses told me to. 2010 left Coronation Street<\/a>, started on EastEnders<\/a> so for past 15 years just watch EastEnders<\/a> no Coronation Street<\/a>. I only intend to watch EastEnders<\/a> in future,” he clarified.<\/p>\n

In another post he clarified the reason for his lack of knowledge about Gemma’s identity “Can I be clear. Since 2010 when I started writing EastEnders<\/a> I have not watched a single episode of Coronation Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I keep in contact with old friends – writers and actors – but don\u2019t know any who started in the last 15 years. The Street I knew is in the past,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Asked why he hadn’t watched the show he worked on for over two decades Daran admitted he simply wants to “focus” on the show he currently works on.<\/p>\n

“I haven\u2019t watched Hollyoaks since I left that either. When I work on a soap I focus on that show. I\u2019ve never watched Emmerdale<\/a> cos I\u2019ve never worked on it,” he revealed.<\/p>\n

Daran began his career on Coronation Street<\/a> as an archivist and has written 11 books, both fiction and non-fiction, about the show and its characters. He also co-wrote Betty Driver’s autobiography, which was released in 2000.<\/p>\n

Prior to departing the show in 2006 he wrote 95 episodes of the soap and was responsible for introducing the first gay character, Todd Grimshaw – originally played by Bruno Langley and now played by Gareth Pierce.<\/p>\n

He also created the popular characters Sean Tully (played by Antony Cotton), Archie Shuttleworth (played by Roy Hudd) and Bev Unwin (played by Susie Blake) to name just a few.<\/p>\n

He also famously invested Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls) Grasmere Drive address on the show and recently described the decision to axe it as “outrageous”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Coronation Street writer Daran Little has confessed he no longer watches the show having defected to EastEnders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[192,15100,236,14941,15105,15106,15101,15102,15103,15104,428,77,15107,208,15099,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-24377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-bbc-eastenders","10":"tag-coronation-street","11":"tag-corrie","12":"tag-corrie-news","13":"tag-corrie-updates","14":"tag-daran-little","15":"tag-daran-little-coronation-street","16":"tag-daran-little-eastenders","17":"tag-dolly-rose-campbell","18":"tag-eastenders","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-gemma-winter-brown","21":"tag-itv","22":"tag-itv-coronation-street","23":"tag-tv","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114346918326447953","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}