Did you see… 1963
11 March 2023 tbs.pm/78443
Monday 11 March 1963
TVTimes
Six steps to Ena
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!
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.
Here we go, then. On with the hairnet. Ena just wouldn’t be the same without it, would she?
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
Every woman likes to make up her own lips and Violet Carson is no exception. Nor is Ena Sharples for that matter!
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
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