Coronation Street is a British soap opera first broadcast on 9 December 1960. The following is a list of characters that first appeared in 1991, by order of first appearance.
Raquel Watts
Brendan Scott
Brendan Scott, played by Milton Johns, made recurring appearances from 1991 to 1993. He is the former manager of Bettabuy and later the owner of the Corner Shop. Brendan harbours a strong resentment of Reg Holdsworth (Ken Morley) who was responsible for his sacking at Bettabuy in the 1980s and attempts to get his revenge by accusing Reg of rigging a prize draw. However, his plan backfires when he has no solid evidence against Reg. Brendan later becomes a judge at a beauty contest and attempts to sleep with contestant Raquel Wolstenhulme (Sarah Lancashire) but is caught by Curly Watts (Kevin Kennedy) who threatens to report him to his superiors. Brendan buys the corner shop from Alf Roberts (Bryan Mosley) after learning that Reg was planning to do the same. Brendan eventually becomes overwhelmed with managing the shop and dies of a heart attack.
Joss Shackleton
Joss Shackleton was an old friend of Amy Burton's, who claimed to be Vera Duckworth's biological father.
Joss was a practised liar and fantasist who told cock-and-bull stories about his own life to impress people. Many of his tall tales involved Royalty; in his career as a barber, he boasted that he'd shaved princes, prime ministers and maharajas, worked at the George V Hotel in Paris, and that he was in the middle of shaving Jack Buchanan when the air raid siren sounded and was ordered to carry on so that Jack looked presentable in the bomb shelter. Another claim was that he'd spent a period butlering at one of the finest houses in Kent and earned a fortune in tips, which he whittled away having picked up his employers' spending habits.
Joss's friendship with Vera's mother Amy appears to have been legitimate, dating back to when they lived a street apart from each other as children. In 1937, when Vera was born, he was serving in the army with Joe Kay. According to Joss, Vera's youth was an agonising time as he saw her every week but wasn't able to let on that he was her real father. He grew ever closer to a long-widowed Amy in their old age, except for a period in 1987 when Joss was courting a woman he met at a lonely hearts club who subsequently died. In February 1991, coincidentally right before Amy suffered a fatal heart attack, she made a new will instructing Vera to see that Joss wanted for nothing until his dying day. After the behest was revealed to Vera by her Auntie Cissie at Amy's funeral tea, Joss dropped the bombshell that he was Vera's father.
While Vera digested Joss's revelation, he was welcomed into her home, relegating the Duckworths' lodger Curly Watts to the sofa. Still grieving for her mother, Vera accepted Joss as her father more through force of will than any evidence proffered. Jack, on the other hand, had been sceptical since the will reading, suspecting that Joss had coerced Amy into making the behest and told Vera a pack of lies in order to sponge off them, despite having a flat of his own. Unfortunately, Vera was determined to carry out her mother's dying wish and wouldn't hear a word against Joss.
Jack wasn't beaten yet - he only had to prove that Joss was a liar. When Curly moved in with Angie Freeman, losing the Duckworths his rent, Jack asked Joss to chip in, to which Joss replied that he didn't carry money as he became a disciple of Gandhi after playing darts with him in Oldham - another tale which Vera accepted unquestionably. When Vera found a photo of Edward VII in Joss's possession, Joss explained that the former King was his grandfather, with his mother being the result of an affair between Edward and Joss's grandmother at a stately home in Leeds where she worked as a servant girl. Convinced that she had Royal blood in her, Vera dismissed Jack when he acted as the voice of reason; as a commoner, it was beyond his understanding.