Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My cousin My cast away this week is the actress Julie Goodyear.

For a quarter of a century, her Coronation Street character Betelinge set the gold-plated standard for big brassy backchatting

blonds. Behind the bar of the river's return, her bosom swathed in leopard print and her head

piled high with platinum curls. She was Manchester's answer to May West.

Her MBE was awarded for services to drama and when she left the series in 1995, 19 million viewers were glued to their TVs. Yet whatever the

script writers came up with it was never as dramatic as the life she has lived

beyond the street. She got pregnant at 17. Her second husband

abandoned her for their best man. And in 1979 she was diagnosed with cancer until she had a year to

live. She's now married to her fourth

husband. If Gloria Gaynor's I will survive isn't on her list of eight today

it'll be a miracle. She says if anyone should be interested in an epitaph for my life, I would like

them to consider at least she tried.

So Julie Goodyear, welcome.

I quoted that figure of 19 million people tuning into your last episode on

Coronation Street that you appeared in as Betlinch. That must have put a huge

pressure on you knowing that so very many people cared about what was happening

to their favorite character.

Not really, Kirstie, because you know, when you're in a television studio, you can actually

blank that from your mind. In fact, you've got to do. It's only if you're on stage or in a theatre that you're so aware.

...