Woz on the telly: PHOENIX KNIGHT

WHEN Pat Phoenix met Tony Booth (C4 Mon) chronicled the love affair spanning the sixties seventies and eighties between Pat Phoenix and yes, you have guessed it, Tony Booth.

Two screen icons of their time, the pair went head-to-head in a ratings war when Phoenix, as Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street, was up against Booth as Mike in 'Til Death Do Ud Part.

They were thrown together by fame and despite, at one point, not having met for 25 years, were fated to fall in love or so it seems.

Booth, who is Cherie Blair's Dad, looks quite well considering his hell-raising lifestyle, and he recalled the moment he knew it was true love.

"I was down to about seven stone in weight and I met Pat in a pub in Manchester. She hadn't seen me for 25 years and she hugged me that hard that in my weak condition I fell over.

"She picked me up and brought me back to my home, it was a right pig sty but she never recoiled just got stuck into cleaning both it and me up"

Booth beat his chronic drink problem, but Phoenix succumbed to cancer.

Shortly before she died the couple were married on her deathbed.

It was a romantic ending to a romantic story.

The programme-makers hid neither stars' excesses and it was all the better for that.

The course of true love does not run smoothly but basically they got there in the end.

Copyright 2002 MGN LTD
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