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50 free Coronation Street trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Coronation Street has been on ITV since December 1960, which makes it the longest-running TV soap in the world. A critic predicted it would not last a month. Sixty-odd years, ten thousand episodes and one Guinness World Record later, the cobbles of Weatherfield are still the most famous fictional street in Britain. These 50 questions walk the whole length of it: Tony Warren's original idea and the working title that nearly stuck, the Rovers Return and its landladies, Hilda Ogden's wall, Ken and Deirdre, the tram crash, the villain who went into the canal, the 2010 live episode and the milestone episodes. Along the way you will meet the future stars who did a stint on the Street before anyone knew their names. It starts with the questions most viewers will have a shot at and works towards the ones only a Corrie completist will get. Play it on your phone, run it as a round at a quiz night, or print it off for the family on a Sunday afternoon.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city, Tony Warren's hometown, did he base Coronation Street's fictional Weatherfield on?
Salford
Salford was Tony Warren's own hometown and the model for Weatherfield, yet for its first five decades the cobbled set itself stood on a backlot in Manchester city centre.
Q 02Tony Warren's serial dropped which working title after a cleaning lady said it sounded like a disinfectant?
Florizel Street
Florizel Street was the pilot's name until Agnes, a cleaning lady at the studios, stood transfixed by it on producer Harry Elton's office TV, convincing him it would work while her verdict on the title got it changed.
Q 03How long did Daily Mirror critic Ken Irwin give Coronation Street when its first episode aired?
Three weeks
Three weeks was Ken Irwin's forecast for a serial the Mirror declared 'doomed from the outset'; it has now run for more than six decades.
Q 04Which actor played Ken Barlow from the first episode in 1960, setting a Guinness record for a continuous TV role?
William Roache
William Roache took the Guinness title for the longest-serving TV actor in a continuous role when America's As the World Turns ended in 2010, and his son Linus Roache is an actor too.
Q 05Which future host of The Chase played factory boss Danny Baldwin in Coronation Street?
Bradley Walsh
Bradley Walsh asked producers to rename the character from Vic to Danny in memory of his own father, who had recently died.
Q 06In which seaside resort was Rita Fairclough's abusive partner Alan killed by a tram while chasing her?
Blackpool
Blackpool's promenade tramway killed Alan in December 1989, months after the episode of Rita in hospital pulled 26.93 million viewers, the show's highest combined rating ever.
Q 07Which husband of Gail Platt, secretly a serial killer, drove her family into a canal in 2003?
Richard Hillman
Richard Hillman's canal plunge drew 19.4 million viewers and made Coronation Street the most-watched UK programme of 2003; he had already bludgeoned young mother Maxine to death with a crowbar.
Q 08Which Betty Turpin dish, served at the Rovers Return for decades, became a supermarket ready meal?
Hotpot
Betty's hotpot was dished up by Betty Driver for 42 years, and the former dance-band singer only took the role in 1969 after being coaxed out of retirement.
Q 09Which senior royal played himself in Coronation Street's live, hour-long 40th-anniversary episode?
Prince Charles
Prince Charles appeared as himself on 8 December 2000 in a live, hour-long episode broadcast on the eve of the show's 40th birthday; the first episode had gone out on 9 December 1960.
Q 10Which Prime Minister said his Home Secretary would look into Deirdre Rachid's 1998 jailing for fraud?
Tony Blair
Tony Blair said he would have Home Secretary Jack Straw look into the 'Free the Weatherfield One' campaign, and Deirdre walked free within the month.
Q 11Which faulty appliance electrocuted Ken Barlow's first wife Valerie as she tried to mend it?
Hairdryer
A hairdryer killed Valerie in January 1971 and left Ken a single parent; by 2007 he had married four times and dated 27 different women on screen.
Q 12What did Hilda Ogden call the scenic wall painting in her living room, topped by three flying ducks?
Muriel
The 'muriel' began as Alpine mountains and later became a coastal scene, and in a 1982 poll Hilda was the fourth most recognisable woman in Britain, behind only three royals.
Q 13Which birds did flat-capped Jack Duckworth keep in a loft as his lifelong Coronation Street hobby?
Pigeons
Q 21Which future Monkee made his TV acting debut in 1961 as Colin Lomax, grandson of Ena Sharples?
Davy Jones
Davy Jones was credited as David Jones for his single 1961 episode, and three years later he was on the same Ed Sullivan Show bill as the Beatles, in the cast of Oliver!
Q 22Which future Absolutely Fabulous star played Elaine Perkins, who refused Ken Barlow's 1973 proposal?
Joanna Lumley
Joanna Lumley's Elaine was a headmaster's daughter and one of the 27 women Ken dated on screen by 2007; the then-unknown actress stayed for just eight episodes.
Q 23Which future Captain Mainwaring played pompous lay preacher Leonard Swindley, jilted on his wedding day?
Arthur Lowe
Pigeons were Jack Duckworth's passion; Bill Tarmey had worked as a Granada extra before first playing Jack in 1979, and the character died asleep in his armchair in November 2010 after Tarmey's health forced his exit.
Q 14Which Hilda Ogden actress later played junk-shop owner Auntie Wainwright in Last of the Summer Wine?
Jean Alexander
Jean Alexander's Christmas Day 1987 exit as Hilda drew a combined 26.65 million viewers, and in 2004 Hilda was still voted the greatest soap character, 17 years after leaving.
Q 15Which actress played leopard-print-loving Rovers Return landlady Bet Lynch for 25 years until 1995?
Julie Goodyear
Julie Goodyear's 1985 episode in which Bet learns she has got the Rovers job is the highest-rated single episode in the show's history, at 21.4 million viewers.
Q 16Which actress, cast at 23 to play a 16-year-old, was Gail Platt from 1974 until her 2024 exit?
Helen Worth
Helen Worth's Gail became the soap's most-married woman, with seven weddings, a tally she shares with serial groom Steve McDonald.
Q 17Which singer from ITV's Popstars played Michelle Connor in Coronation Street for thirteen years?
Kym Marsh
Kym Marsh won her place in Hear'Say on Popstars in 2001, and the band scored two UK number-one singles before she quit to go solo.
Q 18Which second-series X Factor winner joined Coronation Street in 2015 as Aidan Connor?
Shayne Ward
Shayne Ward was the first X Factor winner to release an original song as his winner's single, and before fame he sang in a pub band called Destiny.
Q 19Which Happy Valley star played naive barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme in Coronation Street in the 1990s?
Sarah Lancashire
Sarah Lancashire was earning £90,000 a year by the time she left in 1996, and Raquel's French lesson with Ken Barlow is remembered as one of the show's finest comedy scenes.
Q 20Which Lord of the Rings star played dodgy novelist Mel Hutchwright in Coronation Street in 2005?
Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen wanted the part himself and read the script after his agent was reluctant to pass it on, then joked about Mel turning up next in Emmerdale's bar.
Arthur Lowe walked in and read for the producers while auditions were still under way, and Swindley proved popular enough to get his own spin-off sitcom, Pardon the Expression.
Q 24Which future Oscar winner for Gandhi played Ron Jenkins in Coronation Street from 1966 to 1967?
Ben Kingsley
Ben Kingsley followed his Ron Jenkins stint with regular appearances as a defence counsel in the courtroom series Crown Court before Gandhi made him famous.
Q 25Which love interest for café owner Roy became British soap's first transgender character in 1998?
Hayley Cropper
Hayley Cropper was meant to last two months but stayed until 2014, when she took her own life while dying of pancreatic cancer; actress Julie Hesmondhalgh turned up to audition dressed 'all Bet Lynch'.
Q 26Which future Our Girl and Brassic star played Tina McIntyre until the barmaid's 2014 murder?
Michelle Keegan
Michelle Keegan landed Tina on only her second audition for any part, and the character was pushed from a balcony and beaten with a lead pipe by Rob Donovan.
Q 27Which milestone did Coronation Street pass on 7 February 2020 with an hour-long 'trip down memory lane'?
10,000th episode
The 10,000th episode arrived ten months before the 60th anniversary, and a month later ITV halted production as the UK went into lockdown.
Q 28Which Manchester-based ITV company made Coronation Street, though its founder first rejected the idea?
Granada Television
Granada Television's founder Sidney Bernstein said no until producer Harry Elton persuaded him to commission 13 pilot episodes, and the company later became ITV Studios.
Q 29What does Underworld, the Coronation Street factory run by Mike Baldwin and later Carla Connor, make?
Underwear
Underwear is Underworld's trade, and after the factory burned down in a 2010 siege Nick Tilsley ran a stand-in operation cheekily named Nick's Knicks.
Q 30In which country did the public broadcaster show two Coronation Street episodes a day from 2011 to catch up?
Canada
Canada's CBC had been running about ten months behind Britain, so from autumn 2011 it showed two episodes every weekday at 6:30 and 7 pm, plus a Sunday-morning omnibus, to close the gap.