Tony Warren

Anthony McVay Simpson MBE (born 1937), better known by his stage name Tony Warren, is an award-winning English television scriptwriter, best known for creating the soap opera Coronation Street. He has also been an actor, has created other television dramas and written critically acclaimed novels.

Early life

Warren was born Anthony McVay Simpson, adopting Warren as a stage name in his early acting career. As a child, he trained at the Elliott-Clarke theatre school in Liverpool. He became a regular on BBC Radio Children's Hour and also acted in many radio plays. During this period he performed with many of the people who were later to become household names through Coronation Street, most notably Violet Carson and Doris Speed, who played Ena Sharples and Annie Walker respectively. He later appeared on the stage and in several early ITV Plays of the Week.

Coronation Street

According to BBC producer Olive Shapley, who had worked with Warren on Children's Hour, the idea for Coronation Street came to him late one night in 1959 while they were returning to Manchester by train. Shapley recalled:<blockquote>"At about Crewe, after a long period of silence, Tony suddenly woke me up saying, 'Olive, I've got this wonderful idea for a television series. I can see a little back street in Salford, with a pub at one end and a shop at the other, and all the lives of the people there, just ordinary things and ...' I looked at him...
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