Coronation Street's Maureen Lipman reveals wedding dance to be choreographed by Strictly icon

Coronation Street star Maureen Lipman has revealed the special role Strictly Come Dancing legend Arlene Phillips will play at her wedding

Strictly’s Arlene Phillips will choreograph the wedding dance for Corrie’s Maureen Lipman - though she might have to wait five years for their performance...

Maureen, 78, popped the question to her fiance David Turner over the summer, and despite their the pair are “in no hurry” to walk down the aisle. “I haven’t got a date or a venue but we’re looking,” says Maureen. “The thing is, we are married, really. I still can’t believe this is going to happen. We’ll probably be engaged for about another five years - we’ll get married in hospital.”

Business consultant David jokes they will ask guests to contribute prescription medication, laughing: “The wedding list is going to be in John Bell & Croyden.”

Arlene, who has overseen many a West End Stage number, piped in with: “I’m staging the choreography for the wedding dance. “We’ll create for you so you don’t have to stomp - it will be different, no ordinary ball.”

The trio spoke to the Sunday Mirror at the Oldie of the Year awards, where David quipped to Arlene that his dancing skills weren’t up to much just yet.

“You haven’t got very good material,” he laughed, while Maureen suggested she would include her co-star Rula Lenska would serve as a bridesmaid.

Maureen, who plays Evelyn Plummer in the Weatherfield soap, and Beattie from BT’s TV ads in the 80s, lost husband Guido Castro to cancer in 2021. Her previous husband, writer Jack Rosenthal, died in 2004. She has previously said: “I wasn’t really looking for a new relationship.”

However, the pair fell in love, and Maureen got down on one knee on a train from Edinburgh. She has previously laughed: “I prop­osed as a joke as I’d been rather against the ‘M’ word. I never really expected him to say yes, but to my surprise and slight panic, he said it.”

They will have to start planning the nuptials soon, as Maureen has groaned that David “has about 9,000 rel­­atives”.

“What’s important is that my two, and his three, grown-up kids are happy about it and they get on,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m marrying again. I’m very lucky to have had three exceptional men in my life. We’re enjoying this unexpected Indian summer of late love together.”

She has described of their meeting: “I wrote in my diary afterwards: ‘He turned up on time in a nice clean car and we had a nice walk and went for a pub lunch. Yes, he’s very interesting.’
"We’ve spent an awful lot of time since saying, ‘How did this happen?’"

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