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Dateline: 10th March, 2005
McKellen on the Street! Ian McKellen is to join the cast of ITV soap Coronation Street. He will play author Mel Hutchwright in ten episodes, beginning in May. In his first appearance the author of the bodice-ripping Hard Grinding is invited to speak at the Weatherfield Book Club but it soon turns out that he is not all that he seems. The book has already been mentioned on the soap, which led to calls to bookshops from viewers who thought it was real! Appearing in the soap is, says McKellen, a long-held ambition. "About fifteen years ago," he said, "I turned down a previous offer to visit the Street, as Elsie Tanner’s long-lost nephew. But I chickened out. After all it can’t be easy to fit in with the expertise of the cast who have made Coronation Street so watchable over so many years. Now, I am nervous but raring to go. I don’t yet know what Mel will look like nor sound like (a bit of my native northern accent maybe) but I’m already studying his lines, as rehearsal time is scarce for the five-times-a-week show." After the Coronation Street recording is done, McKellen heads off further north, to the Lake District, to record the whole of Wordsworth's Prelude for BBC radio. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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