English screenwriter Tony Warren was BOTD in 1936. Born Anthony Simpson in Eccles, Lancashire to a wealthy merchantile family, he grew up in Salford in Manchester. He showed an early interest in theatre and began acting professionally in his teens in BBC radio drama Children’s Hour. After leaving school at 14, he trained at the the Elliott-Clarke Theatre School in Liverpool, but was expelled the following year. He moved to London, where he began writing and performing in cabaret shows and appeared in television plays. In 1958, he was hired by Granada Television as a scriptwriter, supplementing his income by devising and staging routines for strippers. In 1960, he was commissioned to script a television drama about the residents of a street in a working-class neighbourhood, inspired by the current trend for “kitchen sink” realist drama. The resulting 13-part series, titled Coronation Street, received mixed reviews from critics who predicted its failure, but was an immediate ratings success, beloved for its positive depiction of working-class communities and (for the time, radical) use of Northern English dialect. A second series was commissioned in 1961, teaching No 1 in television ratings and watched by 15 million viewers per week. Coronation Street became the most popular television drama in British broadcasting history, with many of its key characters developing iconic status, notably the headscarf-wearing fishwife Violet Carson (played by Ena Sharples). Warren remained with the show until 1968, though was retained as a consultant and occasional scriptwriter. His post-television years were erratic, punctuated by financial problems, alcohol and drug abuse and living briefly in a hippy commune in San Francisco. In later years, he wrote a series of popular novels set in Manchester and appeared in a 50th anniversary episode of Coronation Street screened in 2010. Amid many honours, he was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal Television Society. Openly gay since forever, he had a relationship with Coronation Street actor Ernst Walder in the 1960s. He died in 2016, aged 79. Coronation Street remains the longest-running drama series in British television history, currently screening three nights a week and syndicated to over 60 countries worldwide. Warren was played by David Dawson in the 2010 TV drama The Road to Coronation Street, recounting the creation of the series.