Deirdre was nearly written out of the series in 1978, three years after her screen marriage to Ray Langton (Neville Buswell). When Buswell decided to leave the programme, the producers believed there were already enough single women in the fictional street. After Buswell intervened, the writers decided that Deirdre the single mother would be an interesting concept.
One of the highlights of her career was her on-screen wedding to Ken in July 1981, on the day the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer. But even this was eclipsed by Deirdre's extra-marital affair with Baldwin in 1983. As Britain held its breath, a bishop in London warned Granada of the dangers of it all seeming too realistic; a woman in Halifax gave birth in an ambulance, having delayed her departure to hospital to witness the lovers' first illicit kiss; and the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, one of Coro's greatest fans, declared that Ken deserved better.
In the showdown between the two, Kirkbride thought Roache had gone mad when -- unrehearsed and unscripted -- he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against the Barlows' front door as Baldwin stood on the step. "I was literally fighting to get away," she remembered. Tracked by the cameras, she ran to an adjoining room and burst into tears.
When Deirdre and Ken were reconciled in the next episode, the Daily Mail hired the electronic scoreboard at Manchester United's ground Old Trafford and, to the approving roar of 56,000 fans watching United play Arsenal, flashed up the news: "Deirdre and Ken united again!"
Deirdre was dubbed Sexy Specs by papers. Photo / Supplied
In 1987, when Deirdre -- by now working as a shop assistant -- became Councillor Barlow, Kirkbride complained at this improbable turn of events, but soon realised it got Deirdre out from behind the bacon slicer and into the swim of mainstream Street life. However, she remained upset at the decision to have Deirdre divorce Ken over his affair with his secretary.
Her character received a fresh lease on life in 1994 when Kirkbride returned from a six months' absence due to illness; at 39 she had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but recovered after chemotherapy. On screen, however, a planned reconciliation with Ken had to be scrapped, and instead Deirdre embarked on a holiday romance with a 21-year-old toyboy, Moroccan waiter Samir Rachid (Al Nedjari), whom she later married.
"Anne Kirkbride is celebrating her return to health with a crackling storyline, a marvellous performance and a whole new vocabulary," wrote Margaret Forwood in the Daily Express.
The marriage was short-lived and in 1995 Deirdre's third husband died on his way to hospital to donate a kidney to Tracy. She was reunited with Ken in 1999 and married him for a second time in 2005, despite Ken finding out she had slept with the supersmooth corner shop owner Dev Alahan.
Kirkbride was called as a character witness in Roache's trial on sex assault charges last year (he was found not guilty). She said he was "always a perfect gentleman".
As an actress, Anne Kirkbride possessed a photographic memory; she could read through a page of script and almost instantly know it by heart.
Kirkbride was born on June 21, 1954 at Oldham, Lancashire, the daughter of Jack Kirkbride, a painter and decorator who became a cartoonist for the Oldham Evening Chronicle. Her father encouraged her to go on the stage, having spotted her acting talent when she was only 7.
She developed it at Oldham Rep's junior theatregoers' club, and at the age of 11 joined the Saddleworth junior players and then the Oldham youth theatre. On leaving Count Hill grammar school she took a job at Oldham Rep as a student assistant stage manager at £1 a week, combining buying props and helping to build sets with several small acting parts.
When the company's director, Carl Paulson, took her aside and told her she would be acting fulltime on £18 a week, she said she ran through the streets "as if I'd just won the pools". A Coronation Street talent scout saw her in a Jack Rosenthal play and she was asked to read for a walk-on part.
She hated her gravelly voice but revelled in the nine-to-five routine of a soap star, and never wanted to play Shakespeare nor longed for the peripatetic life of a repertory actress. "Sometimes I think I should have made more of an effort to get out and do other stuff," she admitted in 2001, "but then again I've never been terribly ambitious".
In a television confessional, Deirdre and Me (2001), Kirkbride admitted to a compulsion to scrub and clean incessantly (even the lavatories at the Granada studios), and to the depression that in 1998 almost ruined her appearance on This Is Your Life, an ordeal she managed to survive only with the aid of Valium.
Kirkbride, a lifelong heavy smoker, also confessed to suicidal feelings and to a compulsion to iron her knickers.
She took a leave of absence from Coronation Street last September and was written out of the script, but had been expected to return.
In 1992, she married actor David Beckett, whom she met on the Coronation Street set when he briefly played a handyman on the soap.