1,500 posts. Time to pay my respects, I think.
That’s 1,500 posts in 11 and a half years, or 1 every 3 days, more or less the same rate that Deirdre went through the men in Weatherfield according to her Wikipedia page. But I’d never judge a woman who apparently once bagged herself a bloke called “Dirk van der Stek”. Amazing. The Coronation Street writers may have had so little imagination that they passed Deirdre around the male cast of characters like Panini stickers in a schoolyard, but in 4 simple syllables they nonetheless managed to perfectly capture the essence of an early-1980’s Dutch import at a Second Division club. I know absolutely nothing about him but I like to think he was passing through Manchester on his way from Carlisle United to agree terms at Oldham Athletic when he caught Deirdre’s ever-wandering eye in the Rovers. Whoever came up with that fucking name was most definitely wasted on Corrie.
Let’s see here: I will, of course, most fondly remember Deirdre as being my favourite part of the famous 1981—2005 parallel (that didn’t include Liverpool winning the European Cup). I’m pretty sure her name also popped up on my first date with my future wife, who was still clearly working through some bitterness at being forced by her parents to wear a style of glasses frames in her childhood that had long since become synonymous with Deirdre, possibly because, like many in 1980’s Ireland, they simply couldn’t afford anything else. Or maybe they just saw Deirdre as the style icon she has since become in this thread?
I’ll tell you this, though, and it’s a point worth always remembering given that this is a Liverpool fansite and we’re all massive Reds: some of the earliest Liverpool-related images I’m sure we’ll all remember is men with massive mops of hair on top of mean, often moustachioed faces gathering silverware. From Souness and Keegan to McDermott, Thommo and Neal, the club’s 5 European Cup finals in 9 years arrived in the era of big hair. Liverpool FC was in its pomp, and so was Deirdre, playing Mike Baldwin off against Ken Barlow and shagging journeyman footballers named Dirk van der Stek. And while she never (noticeably, that I know of) sported a moustache, that hair most certainly would not have looked out of place alongside Souness in the cauldrons that were Bucharest and Rome in 1984. And as for meanness, look at 24/7’s post above — the final wouldn’t have gone to extra-time, never mind penalties. But alas, Deirdre was a Manc, so it wasn’t to be I suppose.
So here’s to Deirdre, and to the next 1,500 posts. If it takes me as long as it did for the first 1,500, I’ll be 49 by then, an age by which Deirdre had already bagged herself Dev Alahan. Maybe I need to take a leaf out of her book and start keeping my posts like she kept 95% of her relationships — short. On that note, I would like to finish this random post in this most random of threads with a picture of Kevin Keegan and Paul Breitner that all this talk of Deirdre’s 1980’s hair has called to mind (plus it came up in an image search of "Deirdre Barlow hair"
). Thank you.
