The Queen of the North – review

Octagon, BoltonCoronation Street star Pat Phoenix was once described by prime minister Jim Callaghan as "the sexiest thing on television". Yet Phoenix, who played the Street's rapier-tongued man-eater Elsie Tanner for more than 20 years, had a curious influence over Labour leaders. Harold Wilson invited her to No 10, while her hospital-bed marriage to actor Tony Booth made her, for a just more than a week, the mother-in-law of Tony Blair.She achieved perhaps the ultimate canonisation of a northe...

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