Amanda Barrie: ‘Coronation Street would have sacked me if I came out in the 80s’

**Amanda came out as bisexual in 2003 (Picture: ITV/REX)**

Legend Amanda Barrie of Coronation Street said a few years ago that if she had come out in the 1980s, she would have been fired from the show.

From 1988 until 2001, Amanda Barrie portrayed the renowned Alma Sedgewick/Baldwin/Halliwell on Coronation Street on a regular basis. She has disclosed that she concealed her sexual orientation while working on the show.

The actress, who has also been in films like Carry On Cleo and Carry On Camping and television shows like Holby City, Benidorm and Doctors, has said that if she had come out as homosexual in the 1980s, she would have lost her job on Corrie.

In 2022, she revealed on the Conversation Street podcast that she was always afraid that the media would publish details about her sexual orientation.

**In a 2022 episode of Casualty, Amanda made an appearance (Picture: BBC)**

“I will stand by my statement that if that had happened to me at that time, they would not have kept me in Coronation Street,” the woman said, adding that she had spent a lot on attorneys. “Not because of [the producers], but rather because of people who would have said, “I’m not working with her,” and who will remain anonymous.”

In her autobiography It’s Not A Rehearsal, published in 2003, Amanda, who is now eighty-eight, came out as bisexual. She tied the knot with mystery novelist Hilary Bonner in 2014.

Alma, the character, had many significant stories while she was at Weatherfield. Before selling the café to Roy Cropper (David Neilson), she co-owned it with her friend Gail Tilsley (Helen Worth).

Later, as the two men battled for her, she found herself in the centre of the long-running conflict between Ken Barlow (William Roache) and Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs).

In a tragic sequence of events from her farewell narrative, Mike Baldwin, Audrey Roberts (Sue Nicholls), and other close friends saw Alma pass away from cervical cancer. An estimated 15 million people watched the programme, which followed a plotline that showed a sharp rise in the use of smear tests in the UK.

Amanda is a devoted follower of Coronation Street and is happy to see the show’s newfound acceptance of its LGBQT+ cast members and characters.

Now, I start to cry and exclaim, “Holy crap, are they really going to establish a homosexual club on Coronation Street now? What is happening? What is the number of them? They are all emerging. Why did they not emerge while I was present? If they had came out, I could have had a lot more hooks. I was in the lead in this game.

Amanda made an appearance in a BBC One episode of Casualty in 2022. She portrayed Elsie in a plot that ultimately resulted in Dylan (William Beck) learning that elder abuse had been occurring at assisted living facilities.