(born ; he's just not good at holding on to women!"
His family has all departed, his mother Ida died after being struck by a bus in 1961,
his father Frank left in 1964 and died in 1975 from old age, his brother David was killed in
a
Car Accident in 1970, and his daughter Susan died in 2001 in a motorway crash. After his
house burned down in 1971 (killing his wife Valerie), he lived with his 'Uncle Albert', another of the Street's original characters -
Albert Tatlock was the uncle of Barlow's late wife Valerie.
William Roache , the actor who has played Barlow throughout, took exception to the public image of the character as "boring", and attempted to redress the balance by persuading the scriptwriters to let him have an affair and leave his third wife,
Deirdre (
Anne Kirkbride ). His first wife,
Valerie Tatlock (
Anne Reid ), died when she electrocuted herself with a faulty hairdryer in
1971 . In 1973 he wed town clerk
Janet Reid (
Judith Barker ) but the marriage quickly degnerated when she refused to play stepmum to Ken's children. She showed up in 1977 and begged Ken to take her back. He refused and she then took an overdose of sleeping pills and died. In
1979 Ken began dating divorcee Deirdre Langton and proposed in 1981. Deirdre and Ken were married from
1981 to
1990 ; their divorce caused great personal turmoil for both of them (culminating in Ken's suicide attempt). The two were reconciled and re-married in
2005 .
Ken has had four children during the Street's existence: the twins (by Valerie), a daughter (Susan) who was killed in a car accident, and a son (Peter) who returned to live on the street (and was once played by the actor's own son) but has since departed again (after being unmasked as a
Bigamist ). Another son, Daniel, lives with Ken's former girlfriend. Finally, there is Ken's adopted daughter,
Tracy Barlow (again a street returner, played by the fourth actress to have the role!), Deirdre's daughter by her ex-husband
Ray Langton .
One of the most-watched episodes of the soap was when Ken discovered Deirdre was having an affair with his great rival,
Mike Baldwin , and was planning to leave him. William Roache has described how the director allowed him to improvise his reaction to seeing Mike at the front door after Deirdre had confessed to the affair. The question of whether or not Deirdre would leave Ken was a hot news topic at the time.
Ken and Deirdre have been reconciled on several occasions and are currently married. After Deirdre's romance with Baldwin (who had been her boyfriend before she married Ken), Barlow himself formed a relationship with council secretary Wendy Crozier. When Deirdre found out, she was furious, and famously threw him out just as midnight dawned on the new year in
1990 . His relationship with Wendy quickly fizzled, and he attempted suicide just before the new year in
1991 , only to be distracted, and inadvertently saved, by
Bet Gilroy .
While Ken and Deirdre were apart, he had relationships with numerous women, including the headmistress of the school where he worked, Baldwin's ex-girlfriend Alma (who later married Mike), and with Maggie Redman, the mother of Baldwin's son Mark. The latter two affairs both resulted in further antagonism between Ken and Mike.
On
April 7 2006 , Mike Baldwin died in the arms of his former enemy Ken Barlow, with whom he had previously had three high-profile fights.
Despite this record, Ken's on-screen activities have done little to alter the popular image of the character. In the UK, 'Ken Barlow' remains a synonym for a boring man. The British group , but I'm more like Ken Barlow."
